(Seychelles News Agency) - The road to the 2025 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup in Seychelles has officially begun with the launch of the event one year-ahead, which took place on Friday.

The 2025 tournament will take place between May 1 to May 11, with 16 nations set to compete, including the hosts, Seychelles, who will be participating in a first ever global football tournament.

The event to launch the World Cup took place at the Kempinski Resort in the south of the main island of Mahe, where guests included the President of Seychelles, Wavel Ramkalawan, who is also the patron for of the Seychelles Football Federation (SFF), the SFF's president, Elvis Chetty, and the director of competitions at FIFA (the football world governing body), Jaime Yarza.

Young Seychellois beach soccer players take part in the ceremony to launch the world cup (Seychelles News Agency) Photo License: CC:BY

During his address at the event, Chetty explained the importance of the tournament that will take place in Seychelles, stating that this sporting event is a beacon of opportunity for Seychelles.

“Hosting an event of this magnitude brings along a significant impact, promising to usher in an era of unparalleled growth and development for our islands and football community at large,” said Chetty, highlighting the expected surge in tourism from the games.

He also noted the various infrastructure developments that this tournament will also bring.

In fact, a new beach soccer stadium is expected to be constructed in Roche Caiman, near the existing venue, with a 4,000-capacity arena to be built, which will then be dismantled and put into other areas in Seychelles as two smaller stadiums, that will be used to continue the development of beach soccer in Seychelles.

On his part, Yarza joked that when FIFA announced that the tournament would be held in Seychelles, they received more volunteers than ever to join the tournament.

“Attending a world cup is a very special moment and we want to honour the people that love this sport, by bringing them the best teams, the best organisation and we are convinced that Seychelles can offer that,” Yarza added. 

With Seychelles set to host the event almost exactly one year from now, the preparations for the games have already begun, where during the ceremony, the official logo was unveiled, along with the winner’s trophy, and tournament theme song, which is called “Kot mon ne” in Seychellois Creole or “Where is was born”, in English, sang by popular local artist known as Mercenary.

Meanwhile, President Ramkalawan said that the people of Seychelles need to understand that this tournament is much bigger than anything Seychelles has hosted before.

“We are now overtaking the Indian Ocean or a zone in Africa, now we are going global,” he said, adding that “with Seychelles' size, we will never be able to host a normal football world cup, but as small as we are, we can host the Beach Soccer World Cup.”

He added that he hopes that the Seychelles team can do well, and that the tournament will be the catalyst that re-invigorates our local 11-a-side football and brings us back to the heights of previous years.