A dozen of Bermuda’s best young football players will travel to Zurich, Switzerland a week tomorrow to help the world’s governing body, FIFA, inaugurate their new home. The trip will coincide with the 2007 FIFA Congress and Bermuda’s players will be part of the Under-14 Youth Tournament for boys and girls on a new state of the art artificial turf field. The tournament will be staged on May 29. Bermuda Football Association chief Larry Mussenden said: “One country from each of the six confederations in FIFA has been selected to participate in the boys and girls Under-14 tournament. The Bermuda Football Association is honoured be selected as the country representing CONCACAF.”

Going along with the team will be five officials and all the travel expense will be paid by FIFA.

Along with Bermuda’s team, their will be teams from Marino (UEFA), Bolivia (COMEBOL), South Africa (CAF), Bahrain (AFC) and Papua New Guinea (OCEANIA).

At the same time, there will also be an Under-14 tournament for girls consisting of Costa Rica (CONCACAF), Thailand (AFC), Tahiti (OCEANIA), Chile (COMEBOL), Switzerland (UEFA) and Ghana (CAF).

“In addition to the all expense paid travel, hotel accommodations, meals, transportation, as well as any necessary medical care and physiotherapy for the players, FIFA will also provide each player with all their playing kit sponsored by Adidas which includes uniforms, shoes, shinguards as well as equipment for team officials,” added the BFA chief.

The BFA’s Mark Trott said that the tournament format will be:

[obox] Teams will play seven versus seven on one half of a pitch.

[obox] The six teams will form one group.

[obox] There will be eight matches in total.

[obox] Playing time is two halves of 10 minutes each for all matches except the final, which is two 15 minute halves.

[obox] Each team will play two other teams.

[obox] The third and fourth-placed teams will contest the play-off for third place.

[obox] The first and second teams will qualify for the final.

Trott said: Our Under-14 coaches have been training our players for the last few months.”

The following players were selected for the Switzerland trip: Dale Eve, Quadir Maynard, Rakeem DeShields, Daniel Andrade, Trae Harvey, Walter Webb, Zeiko Lewis, Daryl Lounds, Tre Ming, Kashi Davis, Idress Furbert and Jair Minors.

Officials accompanying the team are Troy Lewis, Winston Trott Jr. (coaches) Charles Clarke, Shequita Parsons, (heads of delegation), Troy Brimmer (EMT).

“We are very excited that our players will get to experience a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit FIFA headquarters on such a wonderful occasion. Equally, they will get the opportunity to play against and learn about youth teams that are not in our region and whom they would not get the chance to compete against under normal circumstances.”