Hosting the 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup is important for Indian football

Tomorrow world football governing body FIFA at its two-day Executive Committee meeting in Costa do Sauípe (Brazil) will decide among a number of things who will be given the right to host the 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup.

The Indian football fraternity has been waiting for weeks and months for the final decision of being awarded the 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup after it took much longer than anticipated to get the necessary documentation and guarantees from the Government of India.

World football governing body FIFA over the last two years has been rolling out the red carpet for India to join the bandwagon of global football by being named as hosts of the 2017 FIFA Under-17 World Cup with an aim to push for the growth of the beautiful game on the Indian subcontinent. But the AIFF was forced to wait by the Government of India for the necessary guarantees and changes in laws of the country without which FIFA would not grant any country in the world the rights to host any of its FIFA World Cups.

For Indian football hosting the 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup would mean six renovated, state of the art football stadiums; a learning for administrators and management professionals on how football should be run with tons of inputs from FIFA; better Indian talent development; a new wave of interest in Indian football and much much more…

The above points highlight the importance for India and officially in the early hours of Friday morning India time (Thursday evening Brazilian time) the announcement is supposed to be made about the host nation of the 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup.