Mali comes 10th in the Blind Football World Championships
Published on 27 July 2018 at 12:41 - Modified the 2 August 2024 at 03:00
Last June, the Mali Blind Football team, in its first Blind Football World Championships, supported by Monegasque Cooperation through the Libre Vue* Association, made it to 10th place out of 16 countries in the competition. Their participation was made possible thanks to the financial support of two AS Monaco players, Adama Traoré and Almany Touré.
From the 7th to 17th June, the 10 visually-impaired young people selected for the Mali team were in Madrid to compete with great footballing nations such as England and Brazil.
They were the first sub-Saharan African team to participate in the Blind Football World Championships and reaching the semifinals was a very good result for their first championships.
AS Monaco’s Adama Traoré and Almamy Touré, both originally from Mali, didn’t hesitate to give financial help to enable the team to have good conditions under which to prepare themselves. Their contribution enabled the recruitment of Samir Gassama, former coach of the French Blind Football team, to support the team before and during the competition.
Supported by Libre Vue, the team now wants to go even further. They are now preparing for the Blind Football African Cup 2019 and hope to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
La sélection malienne de Cécifoot © Catherine Cabrol - Libre Vue
For further information, visit: http://www.librevue.org/
*The Libre Vue Association is working with the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako, Mali. It has developed blind football within the school, which has over 200 blind and visually-impaired pupils, and it has managed to put together a national team.