When India won the bid to host the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in December 2013, question marks still remained on the state of the football stadiums in the country. But now, all the six venues — in Kolkata, New Delhi, Margao, Kochi, Guwahati and Navi Mumbai — are cleared to host the World Cup matches by the world football governing body FIFA.
Tournament director of local organising committee Javier Ceppi gave us a vivid picture of how things were at the start.
"There is not a point of comparison, to be honest, infrastructure has improved vastly," said Ceppi. "The amount of critical items that have been renovated on the facilities has been exciting. Focus has not been on decorative part while renovating. Focus has been on critical items; many stadiums didn't have fire certification and proper fire fighting systems -- and that's a death trap, some stadiums had electrical wiring from 1984. Stadiums had sewage system which was completely unfit to receive a tournament; stadiums without bucket seats. It will still take a lot of time to make them 100 per cent perfect but they have done quite a bit," he explained.
Ceppi informed that main concern for them was providing the spectators the best of facilities and priority was always their safety first.
"There have been a lot of transformations into making the stadium more spectator-friendly and safer. That's why having proper electrical system, safe evacuation gates in case of emergency, fire-fighting system, CCTV installations were necessity," said the FIFA representative.
Ceppi confirmed that the core work has matched the requirements. He gave all the credit to the government, All India Football Federation (AIFF), and other private bodies for completing the work on schedule for the World Cup and said FIFA only played the role of advisor. "The onus is on the government federation, and private people who have renovated the stadium. We do have people who state what the requirements are and how to make the best use of limited resources but no matter how many calls we made or nagged, work was to be done by them and they exceeded our expectations," he said.
Despite other cities have more football-loving fanbase, Javier explained why the capital was chosen to host the matches.
"It's the first World Cup in the country and Delhi has a special position in the country, it is capital of the country. It's an extremely important city from the economic, sporting, political, geographical point of view. There are plenty of things that you have to take into consideration to select a venue and Delhi was the right selection. If you look at the other World Cups, mostly finals are played in the capital of the country,” he said.
"Capitals play a predominant role because the reality is they have the connectivity, transport facilities. They usually have the best of services in the country, hotels and facilities for people to come, including foreigners. It's a complete package," concluded Ceppi.