Team Herald

[email protected]

FATORDA: Satisfied with the work completion at the Nehru Stadium, the FIFA delegation team however raised their biggest concern over ‘very small crowd’ attending the matches at the Nehru Stadium.

“There is one big concern we still have and could see during the AFC U-16 Championship that there were very small crowd attending the tournament. The public didn’t respond as we expected and this is a big concern for us,” Jaime Yarza expressed  his dissatisfaction over the poor fan turnout at the stadium.

It could be recollected that Herald had earlier highlighted the issue over the low fan turnout during the AFC U-16 Championship even for India’s matches in the article ‘Where are the fans gone’. 

Jaime has also raised his concern over the same.

“Even having India playing in their home country, they have around 4000 spectators. It was far away from having a full stadium. These are the concerns we have to give to the LOC,” added Jaime.

When asked if Goa stands a chance of hosting any knock-out matches, Jaime replied: “Everything is open. The concern that we have is the public response for the matches. This is the biggest concern right now. And we are trying to find out how we can solve this for the benefit of everyone,” he stressed again.

FIFA U-17 World Cup Tournament Director Javier Ceppi said, “The infrastructure is there but we need to access the willingness of the football people of the State when it comes to attendance.”

Sports Authority of Goa Director (Admin) Praveen Volvotkar responded quickly to the State’s defence and said: “Whatever the issues have been raised regarding the crowd, we will manage to get the crowd. We will involve the school students so that the entire stadium is full. We will work closely with GFA with this.”

GFA member Shubert Furtado said that the GFA will do their best to help FIFA in all the possible ways.