WOMEN'S FOOTBALL IS "LIMPING BEHIND"SAYS FIFA BOSS SEPP BLATTER

credit: BBCSPORTS

Fifa boss Sepp Blatter says women's football is "limping behind" the men's game in both profile and sponsorship. Blatter also thinks football is too "macho" and wants governing bodies around the world to employ more females in positions of influence.

History says in the year 2004, Sepp Blatter, was heavily criticised for suggesting female footballers play in "tighter shorts" to improve the game's popularity. But he says he feels like "a little bit of a godfather" to women's football.

Sepp Blatter who is seeking a fifth term as president of world football's governing body said "Women's football is still limping behind a little bit;" he said "To get new partners for women's football is difficult because the focus is on men's football."

In an interview with BBC Global News, Blatter also said:

• women's football is not yet played "the way he would like it to be played", citing a lack of organised leagues in some countries
• female access to football stadia remains a "problem" in parts of the world, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, because of cultural issues
• he wants to change the Fifa statutes to make it easier for women to occupy positions of power around the globe

The number of women on the committee is currently one, after Burundi's Lydia Nsekera became the first - and so far only - female elected onto it in 2013. Lydia Nsekera is also a member of the International Olympic Committee

Moya Dodd, Asian Football Federation vice-president, and Sonia Bien-Aime, president of the Turks and Caicos Islands Football Association, are also on the executive committee but as co-opted members. Last month, Bien-Aime also became the first female elected onto the executive committee of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football.

In response, Karen Espelund, the only female member of Uefa's executive committee, said that women can "add value" to football and football's appeal. "Football is by far the biggest sport in the world and the professional men's football is an extremely strong position," said the Norwegian. "Girls and women add value to the total product and I find it a little bit strange that not more commercial people see that possibility."

Blatter also confirmed he will attend this summer's Women's World Cup  in Canada "whatever the result" of the presidential election. Starting next month on Saturday 6^th June with the first match Can vs CHN at commonwealth Stadium and consisting of 24 teams and 52 matches, it will be the biggest women's football tournament in history.

Blatter said it was a big opportunity to showcase the women's game and said it was "up to the ladies" to put on a great event. "There will be over 20 cameras in each stadium, there will be goal-line technology and there will be a lot of the public there," he added.  

Sepp Blatter,FIFA president  said, this time, he wants more action on women's game.

U - 17 WORLD CUP 2015

The FIFA U-17 World Cup 2015 will be the fourth FIFA tournament to take place in Chile, a football-mad country in which matches attract large crowds nationwide.

The 2015 FIFA U-17 World Cup will be the sixteenth tournament of the FIFA world cup on 3^rd March 2011 where FIFA revealed Chile was the next country to host the tournament.

Along with proposing ten venues for Chile's hosting of the 2015 copa America, the Chilean football federation also announced its plans for hosting of the U17 World Cup in the same year. 

On 8 April 2014, 8 cities were confirmed as host of the competition, with Copiapó ana Quillota being dropped. The Local organizing committees have also said that the capital City (Santiago) would not host the final.

Venues and their capacities

Venues                                                       capacity

Chillán                                                          12,000

Coquimbo                                                      18,750

Concepción                                                    35,000 

La Serena                                                        18,500

Viña Del Mar                                                   24,965

Puerto Montt                                                   10,000

Talca                                                                 8,200

Santiago                                                           49,000

In addition to host nation Chile, also 23 nations will qualify from 6 separate continental competitions.

Confederation	Qualifying Tournament	Qualifier(s)
AFC (Asia)	2014 AFC U-16 Championship	Australia  North Korea  South Korea  Syria
CAF (Africa)	2015 African U-17 Championship	Guinea  Mali  Nigeria  South Africa
CONCACAF (Central, North America and Caribbean)	2015 CONCACAF U-17 Championship	Costa Rica  Honduras  Mexico  United States
CONMEBOL (South America)	2015 South American Under-17 Championship	TBD TBD TBD TBD
OFC (Oceania)	2015 OFC U-17 Championship	New Zealand
UEFA (Europe)	2015 UEFA European Under-17 Championship	TBD TBD TBD TBD TBD TBD
Host nation		Chile

The tournament detailed as followed;

Host country                            Chile

Dates                                        17^th October – 8^th November

Teams                                       24 (from 6 confederations)

Venue(s)                                   8(in 8 host cities)

The POWER of SCIENCE and MATHEMATICS in building Roboots with ICT

The world is changing. Today, we rely on mathematics and science in ways we could not imagine for the past twenty-one century now. Innovations in technology help us communicate across the globe with ease through satellites, the internet, and cell phones and cars among others. They also help us every day to work better and even pay bills, medical prescription, and medical translations. Advances in medicine and science improve our health and help us to understand the world around us. From balancing a household budget to preparing your taxes to following a recipe, mathematics and science touch every part of our lives today and in the future.

Think ahead to what the world will be like when your child is an adult. What skills will your child need to succeed in life and work in our changing world? A strong background in mathematics and science will prepare your child for college or work after graduation and open doors to higher paying jobs and greater opportunity over a lifetime and help one to make the right decision when it comes to policy making.

Lighten creativity among the people of Africa; Aljazeera ‘Innovate Africa’ a new series highlighting innovation and creativeness across the continent  interviewed Benjamin Nortey on how use his coding to educate people most especially the kids. Mr. Nortey believes that coding is set to be one of the most important languages. He emphasized that across Africa, the combination of science and technology could be the formula for accelerating development.

Mr. Nortey who is innovator, Founder and CEO of Metro Institute of Innovation And Technology in Ghana, led an extra curriculum coding course for children of all ages in order to express his passion for robotics. He said that “we want to build a new generation people the kids in this particular generation, I think we just don’t have to underestimate them. I mean they are so powerful, they are smarter than their parents, they are smarter than teachers and I mean that is a fact. They are born into technology”.  He also thinks children can build robots to solve major problem and guide the blind.

Moving away from the tradition style of education where a teacher stands in front of the class and students seat to receive information, Mr. Nortey thinks robots building work so well in how children are thinking than traditional style of teaching in a sense that, “when it comes to robotics one thing is, if you are going to excel in that field is that you got to have fantasy to imagine things that doesn’t exit and try to make it happen”. He also said that, when he is teaching the kids he does not want them to learn into vacuum he wants them to see real life and also to appreciate mathematics. According to him Mathematics really works and once the kids take that approach, he believes that the kids will have that inventive mind set.

Mr. Nortey also said that when designing game for example you need to understand physics because the cause of principle in motion dynamics matters. He is also trying to use Robotics as a tool to inspire study of science and mathematics to relate to classroom theories using robots so that if when he is talking about a scientific principles Newton’s first law of motion students shouldn’t just memorize the facts they can actually use robots and he can demonstrate for them to see that the law really works.

Ben usually pay regular visit to schools across the country to drummer interest in coding robotics. He has two thousand five hundred students across the country. And once he exposed them to the field they always get a better idea of how to go about building robot. Irrespective about what the kids want to do, if the kid wants to be a politician and when they  get engaged in robotics, he/she sees technology work this way later it will influence the kind of policy he/she makes. Most at times the kids learn and forget everything but with robotics they want to achieve a result. And robotics is for filing, it rewarding, they want the results and they are happy building robots.

Most of the materials in Ben’s lab are made from scrubs. When he is not teaching he and his team gathers upright dumps for useful materials to build robots and they also go for the dumps because some of them contain a lot of component needed. He said that creating robots in West Africa is expensive because the necessary materials used in building robots are not available. 

Mr. Nortey strongly believes that, ‘it time that we really have to redefine our educational system. Because in Ghana I know we have been running and depending on an old system from the British education that they put in place for us. We really need radical change and we should be able to identify people’s interest, passion early and then put them at the right place, give them the right stuffs and with that they are going to excel’.

Again, he believes that in this twenty-one century (21^st), every kid must code just as they learn basic math algebra they should know how to code so that when they see a problem they can be able to attend to that particular problem and this will go a long way as a nation. Because the World is moving and it is not waiting for anybody.

Ben is party of Ghana ongoing commitment to include ICT and robotics in the school curricular to enable the kids study effectively irrespective of their fields.