FIFA GS Jérôme Valcke: 2017 FIFA Under-17 World Cup part of FIFA plans to develop Indian Football!

At the SpoBis conference in Düsseldorf on Tuesday I had the chance to interview the FIFA General Secretary Jérôme Valcke about FIFA granting the 2017 FIFA Under-17 World Cup to India and the FIFA GS openly spoke about why FIFA granted India the hosting rights and what hopes they connect with the tournament coming to India.

The following is what FIFA General Secretary Jérôme Valcke said to me:

It is a very important market! Firstly because its a market which is strong in sports, though not in football. But still football is played at the youth level by a lot of kids and the idea with the Under-17 World Cup was just to work on a long-term plan, a 10 year plan. Where you have this World Cup, which is not the end of the plan but I would say the kickoff for moving forward. The idea would be from now to 2017 is that India is working on building a strong Under-17 team. So they (AIFF) are working on youth football, on other levels – Under-20, Under-23 and the team which will one day qualify for the main World Cup.

So it is really something about football development! To put it directly the word is not maybe nice as a trophy or carrot, this Under-17 World Cup, to make sure there is a commitment, not only from FIFA or All India Football Federation, but also of the government, from the different states and again to work at all levels in order to development football, to make football one of the two main sports with cricket in India.

India is a developed market! It is a business market, when you see what happened with the new cricket league (IPL) a few years ago. It shows that there is a culture of sports and a culture of business in India, where our goal is not to make money tomorrow in India but our goal is to say a country with 1,2 billion of people cannot be left aside.

Here the audio clip of my interview with FIFA General Secretary Jérôme Valcke!