AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2022: Mumbai, Pune are the new venues for the event
Ahmedabad and Bhubaneswar have been dropped as venues for the upcoming AFCWomen’s Asia Cup scheduled for 2022. The Asian Football Confederation announced Mumbai and Pune to be the new venues for the event.
A press statement by the sporting body states, “The decision was confirmed taking into careful consideration the existing challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.” The federation asserted that the decision has been taken in order to reduce the time for players and make optimum use of the bio bubble structure.
In view of the ongoing pandemic, Biomedical Bubble has been put into a function so that while the event is going on, players can be in a safe environment without having to worry about virus attacks. For this very reason, money is involved, and the closer it is to the player’s academics, the easier for the stakeholders to make contributions.
The event will start from January 20, 2022 and will continue till February 6, 2022 and in these 15 days, the events will be conducted at three different venues and DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai is among the three venues. Patil Stadium will host a capacity of 37,900 and if all goes well, this will be a huge boost for the players.
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After the change of venues was announced, the President of All India Football Federation(AIFF) and Chairman of the Local Organising Committee, Praful Patel talked to the media ensuring that the decision was entirely to ensure execution of bio-bubble. “As the situation evolved, we had to adapt and the need was to create a bio-secure bubble,” he said.
He stressed that the new venues are closer to facilities that have previously hosted such tournaments and the geographical proximity of locations like Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Pune will be important during these trying times. He added that he is thankful for the Gujarat and Odisha governments who cooperated with the sudden change of venues.
As for the event, India is currently in the same league as Japan, Australia and China has sealed its place in the finals. The quartet of the same event will start from September this year where 28 teams will be divided in eight groups to fight for the eight remaining positions in arguably the biggest ever continental challenge.