Who can boast of having had such prestigious players in his team as Michel Platini, Andriy Shevchenko, Teddy Sheringham, Ronald de Boer, Marco van Basten, Peter Schmeichel, Karel Poborsky and Christian Karembeu, to mention a few ? Who ?
We at FIFPro are not a little proud of having been able, these last three years, to line up so many international stars on perfectly green grass for the first three occasions of the European Footballers Golf Classic—oh, sorry—the Day of Legends, the new “appellation contrôlée” of an Open golf tournament that has now acquired its letters of nobility.
In 2010, when the project was finally being put into concrete form, Philippe Piat—President of FIFPro Division Europ, and an inveterate golfer—had stressed the determination of the international union of professional footballers to make this nascent event into a permanent fixture.
“And that’s what we have succeeded in doing”, he is delightedly saying today. “But merely ensuring the continuity of this great and wonderful competition would have meant nothing, had we not been able to arouse the interest of the players. Now, this interest is ever growing, and as evidence of that I would cite the continuously increasing number of participants, year after year.”
Making it a permanent fixture, as well as getting it on to the international calendar, requires that the dates be firmly reserved so that, from one season to the next, the occasion will be squeezed into the copiously packed agendas of all former sporting stars. “We need to get all our trump cards working for us if we want to keep surfing on the best big wave. Our Days of Legends will in future be the first Monday and Tuesday in September, and we shall meet again this year, 2013, in the splendid—and obviously princely—surroundings of the Monte Carlo Golf Club in Monaco.”
And, as the Principality is well known for the quality of its welcome, it’s hardly necessary to add that the players will get the cosseting they deserve. “This time again, they will enjoy the finest conditions. Of course, it’s the golf competition that attracts them, as always, and the opportunity it gives them to meet up again with old friends, former teammates, and one-time opponents.”
Christian Karembeu, who was already very prominently present on the first three occasions (in France, Morocco and Ukraine), has agreed this year again to be the Ambassador for this fourth opus, at which Terry Sheringham and Ronald de Boer are to be the bandleaders.
“This idea of sponsorship is new, and adds to the dimensions of the event”, concludes Philippe Piat. “It has for the first time been organized in collaboration with djocà sport, the company with which we are committed to a partnership until 2019.
But let’s now think about 2013, and let’s note that FIFPro has insisted on its being associated with the Peace and Sport organization(1), created in 2007 by Founder and President Joël Bouzou, the Olympic medalist and Modern Pentathlon world champion. This organization based in the Principality has, as we could have guessed, been placed under the high sponsorship of His Serene Highness, Prince Albert II of Monaco”.
“The legends of football in the service of peace”: such will be the message of this fourth FIFPro Golf Open, this Day of Legends that belongs to the present and will be conjugated in the future. This is now a certainty.
(1) Peace and sport (www.peace-sport.org) works for the construction of Lasting Peace throughout the world. To achieve this, it promotes the practice of organized sport and its values as an instrument in the education of the coming generations, and as a vector of social stability, ever closer ties, and dialogue between communities. A genuine global initiative in the service of peace, Peace and Sport is active in areas that have been left vulnerable by extreme poverty, the aftereffects of conflicts, and the absence of social cohesion.
