FIFA’s head of tournaments Jaime Yarza congratulated the local organising committee of the FIFA U-17 World Cup for successfully conducting the country’s first FIFA event smoothly.
“FIFA U-17 World Cup has been a fantastic tournament in every sense,” said Yarza. “All the teams that played in India are very happy,” Yarza said. “The only reason for some of them to be sad was that they had to leave India early rather than exit the tournament early.”
The FIFA official had addressed the media at a tournament wrap-up press conference in Kolkata, two days before the final, along with All India Football Federation head Praful Patel and tournament director Javier Ceppi.
Yarza was impressed by the work done by the Indian authorities and said that it was more like a senior World Cup than an U-17 World Cup. “For this reason, the facilities are good enough to host senior events,” he said, supporting India’s bid to host the 2019 U-20 World Cup.
Ceppi, who has been working on the tournament for three years, said that the first word he learnt when he first came to India was jugaad. “For me that word reflected everything we didn’t want,” said Ceppi. “From the first moment I have told over and over again, ‘No jugaad!’ That culture of doing things in the last moment was not going to work.”
Both Patel and Yarza lavished praise on the Chilean for his hard work and persistence to ensure there was, in fact, no ‘jugaad’ on India’s part.
“Everything went on smoother than we thought it would,” said Ceppi. “There is only one first time and we wanted to ensure that there were no mistakes. I am sure that India will get more FIFA events in the future.”
Speaking about the development of football through the Mission XI Million project, Yarza said that India will be a pioneer in having successfully carried out the grassroots project and will be a model for many more countries to follow suit. Yarza also congratulated the Indian U-17 team on their first World Cup.
Praful Patel added that he has asked FIFA to support the AIFF in its plan to start a full-fledged National Centre of Excellence that will work as a centre for the development of not just the men’s team but also the women’s side and the junior age groups.
Patel said he was grateful to FIFA for putting faith in India in hosting the tournament and was happy with the way everything, from organisation to infrastructure and match attendance.
The only regret Patel had was that Guwahati was not able to host the semifinal, but added that Ceppi and his team did all they could to salvage the rain-battered pitch but were not going to take any risks. “We know that the northeast is the epicenter of Indian football and it is sad that they did not get to host the semifinal.”
Said Ceppi: “The Guwahati ground was the best pitch among all the venues, but it was beyond us to the pitch ready in time for the semifinal.” The Assam government had even used a helicopter in an attempt to dry up the pitch using its rotors, but it did not help.
Yarza said that the tournament’s legacy would be the passion for football that 187 countries got to watch, referring to the turnout for games. With two more games to be played, India is close to beating China’s record of 1.2 million cumulative attendance at a single U-17 edition.
Both Ceppi and Yarza are confident that India, having passed this test, is now ready to host further FIFA tournaments without the help of outsiders.
