E-Sports are holding another junior football tournament this Friday, but there’s still time to register before tomorrow’s deadline.
The competition, to be played at GEMS American Academy in Khalifa City, is open to boys and girls with three age categories – U-6 (one group), U-8 and U-10 (both two groups) available. The competition has a round-robin stage followed by the knockouts.
The U-8 and U-10 groups will consist of six-a-side teams with matches lasting 12 minutes each, while in the U-6s age group, teams will consist of five players with 10-minute duration games.
Rules will be different compared to the traditional 11-a-side format. Among the rules implemented by E-Sports are rolling unlimited substitutions, goalkeepers being permitted only to release the ball by foot as well as not coming out of their penalty area and no off-side rules.
Thirty teams have already registered for the one-day event and with sides from Dubai and Abu Dhabi signed up, it promises to be a very competitive tournament.
“We have plenty of teams already registered which is great news,” said Rhodri Lewis, E-Sports football academy head coach.
“We have teams travelling from Dubai as well as Abu Dhabi for this competition. We ran two similar tournaments for the under-eights and under-10s last year and both were very successful.
“We want even more teams to sign up because the more teams there are, the better the competition will be.”
Explaining the reason why the tournament is being held, Lewis said: “E-Sports offers a wide variety of sports for children like gymnastics and tennis. And football is very popular around the world especially here in the UAE and we want to play our part in making the sport grow and help children get active by playing sport on a regular basis.
“It’s going to be one of those football tournaments that teams will want to be a part of and we want to help promote football from a young age.” Team entries cost Dh100 with no more than 10 players in each squad. So hurry up and join the fun.
What: E-Sports Abu Dhabi Junior Football Tournament
Where: GEMS American Academy, Khalifa City, Abu Dhabi
When: Friday, December 12 from 09:00
Contact: To register or for more info email Rhodri@esportsdubai.com or phone 04 369 7817. Registration closes 17:00 tomorrow.