His Highness Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Honorary President of the UAE Football Association and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Sports Council unveiled the offoical logo for the World Cup yesterday.
Huge banners were unfurled before assembled dignitaries and members of the international press, followed by a press conference in which UAE FA President, His Excellency Mohammed Khalfan Al-Rumaithi, General Secretary of the Abu Dhabi Sports Council, His Excellency Mohammed Ebrahim Al Mahmood, and FIFA Secretary General, Jerome Valcke, all took questions.
The competition, which pits champions from each of the international football championships against one another in a knockout tournament, has been a great success in Japan for the last four years. Mr. Valcke said that the relocation of the tournament to Abu Dhabi partly represented an experiment to see how well the event fairs away from its adopted Japanese home, where an average of 45,000 fans have flocked to each game.
The inaugural UAE tournament will take place between December 9 and 19, 2009, comprising a total of eight games staged at Abu Dhabi’s largest stadiums, Zayed Sports City Stadium and Mohammed Bin Zayed Stadium. Teams are still battling it out in FIFA championships across the globe, the winners of which will travel to the capital this coming winter. Past winners have included Manchester United and AC Milan. For more information on the event, keep your browsers tuned to www.timeoutabudhabi.com
