(Eniola Ajibola; 500L Mech Eng)
The just concluded 2013 FIFA confederations cup was the 9th
edition of the competition organized by FIFA. The tournament which was held in
Brazil as a prelude to the 2014 world cup kicked off on the 15th of June and
ended on the 30th of June 2013 with 8 teams from 6 different confederations
participating.
The game took place in 6 different cities and a total of 28
matches were played. The host nation- Brazil were not only the defending
champion, but have also won the competition a record 4 times. The competition
witnessed large turnout of fans followed by a very colourful, thrilling and
entertaining opening ceremony before the opening match between Brazil and Japan
which ended 3-0 in favour of the Brazilians.
HOW THEY QUALIFIED
Argentina and France are the only team to have won all three
major FIFA tournaments namely: The world
cup, the Olympic football competition
and the confederations cup. The teams
that participated at the 2013 confederations cup were Brazil, who qualified as
host; Spain entered the competition as European and world champions, Japan
represented the Asian confederation as winners of the Asian cup, Mexico were
the CONCACAF cup winners and represented the CONCACAF confederation, Uruguay
won the Copa America thereby representing the CONMEBOL confederation making the
second team from that region, Tahiti- the 'promo-team' represented the Oceania confederation after
winning the Oceania nation's cup in June 2012.
Nigeria- the winner of the 2013 Africa cup of nations
represented the CAF confederation and Africa at large. Italy was however awarded
a spot in the competition because Spain had won both the 2010 FIFA world cup
and UEFA EURO 2012 leaving a slot left for an European team to fill up
prompting Italy's invitation as the runner up of the EURO 2012 competition.
HOST CITIES
The FIFA confederations cup was held in 6 cities and 6
stadia in Brazil namely: The 63,000 capacity Estadio Mineirao in Belo
Horizonte; the 52,000 capacity Arena Fonte Nova in Salvador; Arena pernambuco
in Recife with a capacity of 44000; the 68,000 capacity Estadio Nacional Mane
Garrincha in Brasilia; Estadio Castelao in Fortaleza with 64,846 capacity and
lastly, the most prestigious and famous Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro with
approximately 76,804 seating capacity.
THE REFEREES
A total 0f 30 match officials comprising of 10 referees and
20 assistants were drawn from all the 6 confederations during the tournament
amongst which are Howard Webb (England), Bjorn kuippers (Holland), Pedroproenca
(Portugal), Enrique Osses (Chile), Diego Abal (Argentina), Joel Aguilar (El
Salvador), Djamel Haimoudi (Algeria), RavshanIrmatov (Uzbekistan), Yuichi
Nishimura (Japan) and Felix Brych (Germany)- officiated the Chelsea VS
Barcelona 1st leg tie of the 2012 semi-finals of the UEFA champions league.
MATCH BALL
The official ball for the competition was designed and
produced by Adidas. The ball was named Adidas CAFUSA- an acronym that was
coined from the following words: carnival (Carnaval in Brazil), football
(Futebol in Brazil) and Samba.
GROUP STAGE
All 8 teams played in the group stage with the La FuriaRoja.
The Spanish national team emerged as the biggest winners during the group stage
of the competition thrashing Tahiti 10-0 in their second group match followed
by Uruguay who scored 8goals in their final group game against Tahiti.
Brazil and Spain won all their group games and qualified for
the semi-finals with 9points while Uruguay and Italy completed the teams for
the semi-finals with 6 points each. Japan and Tahiti left the competition with
neither a victory nor a draw and Tahiti went home with the record of conceding
the highest number of goals at the confederation cup taking with them a
basketful of 24 goals- a record which used to be held by Saudi Arabia with 18
goals. A total of 58 goals were scored during the group stage and 41% of the
goals were against Tahiti.
THE SEMI-FINALS
Brazil and Italy qualified from Group A while Spain and
Uruguay completed the semi-final slot from Group B. The first semi-final match
was between Brazil and Uruguay with Brazil coming out victorious with a 2-1
defeat over Uruguay. The other semi-final match was between Spain and Italy
with the match ending 0-0 after extra time thereby going into penalties with
Spain defeating Italy 7-6. The third place match between Uruguay and Italy
ended 2-2 AET and was decided on penalties; Italy emerged as the winner after
the shoot-out thereby receiving the bronze medal.
THE FINALS
The final match was between Spain and Brazil. The match
ended 3-0 in favour of Brazil making them the first team to win the tournament
a record 4 times-3 straight in a row.
BEST OF THE TOURNAMENT
The golden boot award went to Spain's Fernando Torres with 5
goals (all thanks to Tahiti, LOL), Brazilian striker, Fred also with 5 goals
went home with the silver boot while new Barcelona and Brazilian forward-
Neymar JR went home with double honours, winning the Most valuable player of
the tournament and also the bronze boot for scoring 4 goals. Andres Iniesta emerged as the silver ball
winner being the second most valuable player of the tournament while Brazil's
Paulinho was awarded the 3rd most valuable player (bronze ball) of the
tournament. Julio Cesar was the best goal keeper of the tournament and Spain won
the fair play award for the competition.
CONTROVERSY
During the opening ceremony at the Brasilia national
stadium, the Brazilian president- Dilma Rouseff and FIFA president- Sepp Blatter were booed by the
70,000 fans in attendance. The boos started when Blatter and Rouseff were
announced to take the inaugural speeches of the 2013 edition of the
confederations cup. Shortly after that, twitter hastags against the Brazilian
president popped up and reached the worldwide top 10 list of trending
topics.
Prior to the game, demonstration outside the stadium were organized by
the citizens that were unhappy with the amount of public funds invested in both
the confederations cup and the world cup. Similar protests took place before
the Mexico-Italy game at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
THE NEXT EDITION
The next edition of the confederations cup will take place
in Russia by 2017 before the world cup in 2018 which is also expected to be
hosted by Russia.
TEAMS RATINGS
BRAZIL- 9.0
SPAIN - 8.0
ITALY - 7.0
URUGUAY - 7.0
NIGERIA- 6.0
MEXICO - 6.0
JAPAN - 5.0
TAHITI - ????? Just rate Tahiti yourself, lol''
PRIZE MONEY
After the competition, the football associations of
individual countries received the prize money from FIFA based on their team's
finishing positions. The following prizes were awarded to each team:
· Brazil
(winner) received $4.1M
· Spain (RUNNER-UP) received $3.6M
· Italy (third
place) received $3M
· Uruguay
(fourth place) received $2.5M
Mexico,
Tahiti, Japan, and Nigeria received $1.7M each
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