Sports: Kolkata's Salt Lake Stadium will host the Fifa Under-17 World Cup final
The tournament is set to begin on October 6 with the final on October 28.
Kolkata’s Salt Lake Stadium will host the final of the Fifa Under-17 World Cup, a delegation of Fifa officials, which has been taking a tour of venues in India, announced on Monday. The final of the 24-team event, the biggest Fifa tournament to be held in the country, will be on October 28.
The tournament begins with two matches on October 6 – Navi Mumbai and New Delhi will host the opening games. The two semi-finals will be held at Guwahati and Navi Mumbai. Over the past week, the committee looked at six proposed venues – New Delhi, Goa, Kochi, Navi Mumbai, Guwahati and Kolkata.
Tournament Director of the Local Organising Committee Javier Ceppi said, “It is a happy day for me because all the questions about the match schedule will stop being asked. We can finally focus on other things. It has been an extremely complicated process to finalise the schedule to have a World Cup in India – different festivities, weather patterns, different timelines. We know that October is a month of festivities and we want this to be a festival of football.”
The slogan for the tournament, “Football takes over”, was also unveiled in Kolkata.