MUMBAI: With just about four months remaining for the FIFA U17 Women’s World Cup, a lot of uncertainties still remain unresolved, including the 16 countries who would participate in the tournament that India is scheduled to host for the first time.
For the record, it was on 12 May that FIFA announced that the rescheduled tournament would be held between 17 February and 7 March 2021, subject to further monitoring (emphasis ours).
FIFA have convened its council once again on Thursday where they are set to discuss the upcoming events including the U17 Women’s World Cup.
The return of football in India is with the AIFF (All India Football Federation) set to conduct the I-League which is expected to start, also at Kolkata, in November. The Indian Super League, the top-tier league in India, is also slated to kick-off later this year in Goa.
The venues and training grounds are also not a problem since work has been progressing on schedule on all five host stadiums and practice pitches around them.
However, it remains to be seen if the qualifiers for the cup will be completed in time.
UEFA (Europe) decided to cancel their qualifiers outright last month and decided to nominate Spain, England and Germany based on their rankings with Oceania (OFC) following suit, selecting New Zealand for the World Cup in India.
Only AFC (Asia) have conducted the qualifiers as scheduled. Japan and DPR Korea have booked their places in the final round who had finished champions and runners-up respectively in the 2019 AFC U16 Women’s Championship.
The qualifiers have still not been held by CAF (Africa), CONCACAF (North and Central America) and CONMEBOL (South America) for the World Cup.
This makes one wonder if the tournament will be able to stick to schedule or if the pandemic has dealt a fatal blow to the event.
