World of Phygital Football descends on Abu Dhabi for Phygital Contenders
ABU DHABI (WAM) The world of Phygital Football will descend on Abu Dhabi this summer, as top clubs vie for qualification to the prestigious Games of the Future 2025. The 'Phygital Contenders: Abu Dhabi – Football' tournament is scheduled to take place from July 25 to 29 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC).The tournament is organised by ASPIRE, the Local Delivery Authority for the Games of the Future Abu Dhabi 2025, in collaboration with Ethara, the Event Delivery Partner, and Phygital International, the global rights holder.Twenty-four elite clubs from across the globe are expected to compete, with representation from North and Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.Among the notable participants are Team Joga (USA) and LPT Venezuela, defending champions of the Games of the Future 2024 side tournament.This event marks the culmination of a year-long international tournament season, encompassing the Phygital Origins and Phygital Rivals competitions.Abu Dhabi will now serve as the final battleground before the Games of the Future 2025, set for December 18–23 in the UAE capital.Only the top-performing clubs will earn their place on that stage and the chance to be crowned global champions.CEO of Phygital International, Nis Hatt, commented, 'Phygital Contenders: Abu Dhabi – Football represents the culmination of a season-long qualification process and will set the stage for what promises to be the most competitive Games of the Future to date.''We are witnessing unprecedented global engagement in phygital sport, and this tournament reflects its evolution as a legitimate and future-focused athletic discipline.'
CEO of ASPIRE, Stephane Timpano, commented, 'Bringing Phygital Contenders to Abu Dhabi is both a tremendous opportunity and a meaningful responsibility. Abu Dhabi has always championed bold, forward-looking ideas, and phygital sport is no exception. We're proud to host some of the world's most elite clubs and serve as the stage where the future of global competition is being defined, and look forward to five days of intense competition that will determine the final contenders for the main event this December.'
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Veterans and tyros If the script goes to plan, Spain's La Liga season will open with a fairy tale. It goes by the name of Santi Cazorla. He is 40 years old, his right ankle has endured so much wear and tear it often feels twice that age. Yet on Friday Cazorla will be a top division footballer once again, should he take to the field, probably off the bench, for Real Oviedo at Villarreal. The script has set up this comeback perfectly. Cazorla spent three spells of his long, courageous career at Villarreal, who he first joined at 17, reluctantly waving goodbye to Oviedo, the club he grew up at, after their relegation to the second division. Oviedo went on to sink far lower. They have spent time in Spain's fourth tier in their 24 years outside the top flight, faced bankruptcy but, helped by the midfield prompts of the repatriated Cazorla, once a Premier League star with Arsenal, they won promotion back to the elite in June. 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That was Zinedine Zidane. A decade later, Xabi Alonso, who governed Madrid's midfield for five years up to 2014, is being asked to do something similar. Unlike Zidane, Alonso already has a distinguished managerial resume, built around his astonishing domestic double at the helm of Bayer Leverkusen in 2023-24. There was inevitability that he would follow that with an upwards move to one of the three superclubs – Liverpool, Madrid or Bayern Munich – he represented as a cerebral footballer. The timing made Madrid, who waved goodbye to Carlo Ancelotti in June, the front-runners for his signature. The timing also made them needy. Ancelotti could not mount a successful defence of his European Cup or Liga titles last season. His successor recognises he has urgent work to do in key areas. Up front, there's improvement to be made in how Vinicius Junior and Kylian Mbappe, individually brilliant but both inclined to operate in the same left-flank, work as a tandem. 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The redevelopment of Camp Nou, a two-year project that obliged Barca to relocate to the Olympic Stadium in 2023-24 and 2024-25, was due to be completed earlier this year. It still hasn't been, and there's now an against-the-clock rush for it to be approved to play in by the time of the club's first home match in mid-September. Even then, a very reduced capacity would be allowed, because the full renovation, with seating for over 100,000, is set a long time in the future. Barca are becoming accustomed to walking the tightrope of imminent deadlines. Their difficulties in meeting La Liga's Financial Fair Play rules over the past three seasons have regularly left new signings unregistered for a season's opening day, their paperwork being completed after match day one. 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More than three-quarters of those games have been in charge of Atletico Madrid. As Simeone, the great alchemist of Atleti, embarks on his 15th season at the helm, he can count up millions of reasons why he has stayed so long. No manager in Spain has had heftier backing in the transfer market. In the last two summer windows combined, Atletico, a mid-table, financially-constrained institution when Simeone took over in late 2011, have outspent every other Liga club, including rivals Real Madrid, on transfer fees. The latest addition is Giacomo Raspadori, the centre-forward fresh from winning his second Serie A title with Napoli and with 40 Italy caps to his name. Raspadori can look forward to the sort of excellent service Alex Baena, lured from Villarreal and second only to Yamal and Raphinha in last season's leading assisters in La Liga, provides to a striker. But he'll also be alive to the intense competition for forward positions in a squad including Antoine Griezmann, Julian Alvarez and target-man Alex Sorloth, not to mention the coach's son, the lively winger Giuliano Simeone. That's a lot of firepower in the hands of a manager sometimes scorned for his cagey tactics, but whose ambition to gain a third Liga title of the Simeone era is plain.
