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Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) announced the cancellation of the FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup 2020 due to the logistic and safety obstacles caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, the world football body has now awarded the hosting rights for the U-17 Women's World Cup 2022 to India.
The U-17 Women's World Cup 2020 was originally slated to be held from November 2-21 in India. The event was subsequently postponed to February 17 with the final to be held on March 6 in 2021.
Despite the postponement, the qualification campaign for the tournament could not be completed. While AFC (Asia), UEFA (Europe) and OFC (Oceania) had finalized their representatives for the tournament, other continental bodies like CAF (Africa), CONCACAF (North, Central and Caribbean America) and CONMEBOL (South America) were yet to hold their qualification tournaments.
With India registering around 30,000 new coronavirus cases on a daily scale, the Government of India, Sports Authority of India, and the All India Football Federation deemed it unsafe to host the tournament. FIFA had been in continuous negotiations over the same for the last few weeks, and they finally cancelled the tournament.
With India now hosting the 2022 edition, it could mean that the current U-17 Indian women's national team will miss out on the World Cup. The current U-15 squad of the Indian women's team is expected to have the opportunity with the girls set to be scouted from all over the country.
Change in FIFA Club World Cup and U-20 Women's World Cup dates
In addition to shifting the dates of the U-17 Women's World Cup 2020 to 2022, the FIFA Club World Cup 2020 will now be held from February 1 to 11 in 2021. The U-20 Women's World Cup, which was also postponed to early 2021, will now take place in 2022 in Costa Rica.
India will also host 2022 AFC Women's Asian Cup alongside the U-17 Women's World Cup 2022 now.
