UEFA Flaunts FIFA’s High Altitude Ban
By: Bob | June 8th, 2007
It probably seemed like a good idea at the time they thought of it. Organizers of the EURO 2008 competition marked the one-year countdown to the competition Friday by playing an exhibition game on a glacier near the 4,158-metre high Jungfrau peak in Switzerland.
The 10-minute exhibition was an excellent photo-op. The location choice is nothing short of ironic, however, considering that it was just last month that FIFA announced that it was banning all games held above 2,500 metres, a decision that has left some South American countries slightly more than pissed off. Perhaps FIFA will allow high altitude World Cup qualifiers in the future if they are also limited to ten minutes and if the score is determined before the match like it was in this exhibition.
Maybe this is what FIFA meant when it said that playing at high altitudes was a health risk. Frankly I think every referee should have to repel into a stadium. Either that or they should enter by being shot out of a cannon or while be chased by lions.
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