In April, the international governing body for football, FIFA, lifted a ban on games being played in Libya. This means the Libyan national team will be able to play qualification games for the next football World Cup at home; the World Cup will be held in Brazil in 2014.
In April, the international governing body for football, FIFA, lifted a ban on games being played in Libya. This means the Libyan national team will be able to play qualification games for the next football World Cup at home; the World Cup will be held in Brazil in 2014.
The Libyan team played the first of these matches on June 7 in Tripoli against Congo, which resulted in a tied score of 0-0. A second match against Togo will follow in Benghazi on June 14. Then the Libyans will play their final qualifying match in Group I of the African World Cup qualifying competition in Cameroon in September.
And Libya’s transitional government is right behind the games, the current Prime Minister Ali Zeidan told British news organization, BBC.
Following this the Libyan Football Federation also announced it would re-start the domestic league after three years of no play. The Federation said that 16 local clubs would be supported financially with grants of a million Libyan dinars each (around US$600,000) and that the league would launch again on July 12.
Libya’s sports stadiums and infrastructure have suffered since the end of the former Libyan government led by Muammar Gaddafi. Libya was supposed to host the African Cup of Nations this year but because of the insecurity there, South Africa hosted the tournament instead; now Libya will host the games in 2017.
It’s hard to know exactly where that tournament will be hosted though, as Libya’s stadiums are all in a sad state of repair.
In Libya, locals believe that the biggest problem will be security and protecting the various games from armed militias.
The government however has been quick to reassure football fans, saying that they are capable of making the venues secure and safe. Indeed the head of the Libyan Football Federation, Anwar al-Tashani, recently met with FIFA president Joseph Blatter and Issa Hayatou, president of the Confederation of African Football, in Mauritius recently, to assure them the June matches would be secure.
The decision by FIFA “will enhance stability and security in Libya,” a spokesperson for the Committee of Labor and Social Affairs, Youth and Sports, Halima Wariqli, said. She believes the Libyan people will also be supportive because they’re so passionate about the game.
“Libyans have proven their ability to face big challenges during and after the revolution and this time they will be the ones securing this event and ensuring its success,” Wariqli suggested.
As UK newspaper, the Guardian recently reported “Libya goes into the upcoming qualifiers against DR Congo and Togo in good spirits after beating Uganda 3-0 in a friendly game in Tripoli last week”.
Anyway there is no need to be overly dramatic about this situation, the sports editor of the New Quryna newspaper, Saif Nasr Ambieh, said. “Despite the fact that there are weapons everywhere in Libya, we also have a regular police force and army.”
To prove his point, Ambieh pointed to the success of the game hosted by Libyan club, Al Nasr, early in April, where they played Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces in a African Confederation Cup match at home in the eastern city of Benghazi.
The FIFA decision “is an opportunity to get to the finals of the World Cup for the first time,” Ambieh said optimistically. “And to turn the bitter page of repeated failures and defeats under the former regime.”
