The Business Bytes
TBB BUREAU
BHUBANESWAR, SEPT 14, 2021
Speed Force outplayed Outlaws and won the final match 1-0 to grab a place and represent Bhubaneswar in the national finals of the Red Bull Neymar Jr.’s Five, a globally established five-on-five football tournament which kicked off its Bhubaneswar qualifiers at KIIT, here on September 11.
Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five 2021 city qualifiers started from 21st August 2021 and continued till 12th September across 18 cities including Indore, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Bangalore, Lucknow, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Siliguri, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jalandhar, Dimapur, Bhubaneswar, Kochi, Chandigarh and Goa. The winning teams from the city qualifying matches will compete at the Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five national finals scheduled to be held in the last week of September for a chance to make it to the Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five 2021 World Finals in Qatar.
It is the biggest 5-a-side football tournament in the country in-terms of locations and participants.
Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five is the Brazilian star’s signature five-a-side tournament bringing players aged 16 to 35 from all corners of the world together to celebrate their shared passion: football. It is a fast, technical and fun competition which sees two teams of five players, sans a goalkeeper, have 10 minutes to strut their stuff and win a chance to impress Neymar Jr. The twist in this thrilling affair is that for each goal scored by a team, a member of the opposition will have to leave the field. The team with the maximum players takes the spoils.
Regarding the evolution of this global football tournament, Neymar Jr. commented, “It’s amazing. I remember as if it were today, when they showed me the proposal for the tournament, rules, boxed goals that brought me back to when I was a kid. The objective was transforming Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five into a reference for football players whenever they think of 5-a-side games, and I think we’re on the right track. There have been more than 400,000 people over the last four years, dozens of countries in the qualifiers. It’s very cool to see more female teams and more women involved in the tournament, always at the highest level. And this is just the beginning of our journey.”
