UEFA President Aleksander \u010ceferin was criticised Monday by soccer governing bodies in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean for allegedly saying the expanded 48-team World Cup creates uninteresting matches.<\/p>\n
The associations of Cape Verde, Congo, Cura\u00e7ao, Haiti, Jordan and Uzbekistan issued a joint statement they said was in solidarity with the federations of Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.<\/p>\n
\u201cFootball does not belong to a select group of nations. Its strength comes from its universality,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor many countries, participation in the FIFA World Cup is not only a sporting achievement. It is a moment that inspires a generation, accelerates football development and creates memories that last a lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statement didn\u2019t cite the comment by \u010ceferin. He was quoted by the Slovenian websites Zurnal 24 and Dosi as remarking on the subject last Monday at a conference in Ljubljana.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a huge number of matches that are completely uninteresting,\u201d he said, according to Zurnal 24, while adding the expansion allows small countries to participate and experience the tournament\u2019s excitement.<\/p>\n
UEFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The federations issuing the statement, which was released by South Africa\u2019s federation, also didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Cape Verde, Cura\u00e7ao, Jordan and Uzbekistan qualified for their first World Cup, while Congo and Haiti reached soccer\u2019s top event for the first time since 1974. Cura\u00e7ao lost to Germany 7-1 Sunday in its opener.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UEFA President Aleksander \u010ceferin was criticised Monday by soccer governing bodies in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-737045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}