“The aim of the games is to bring youth together,” President Blatter says.
“So we took the decision that Youth Olympic football tournaments will have teams representing each continent and that these representatives should be countries that don’t have a chance to compete at the Olympic Games,” he says.
“For these countries, involvement in the Youth Olympic Games will be a tremendous boost for them to improve their game and it will be a great honour for them to go to an Olympics.”
Flying the flag for Oceania are Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.
The Vanuatu U-15 men’s team are first in action and face Iran on Friday, kick off 6pm local time, before meeting Haiti at 8.45pm next Thursday.
The Papua New Guinea women’s team clash with Iran at 6pm on Sunday and then take on Turkey at 8.45pm next Wednesday.
There are 26 sports on the Youth Olympics schedule but it is football that has the honour of getting proceedings underway. The women’s tournament kicks off today, two days ahead of the official opening ceremony, with a match between Turkey and Iran.
The other female teams included are Chile, Trinidad and Tobago, and Equatorial Guinea, while the other men’s teams are hosts Singapore, Zimbabwe and Montenegro.
The top two finishers from each group will advance to the semi-finals.
The Oceania pair booked their tickets to Singapore after being selected by OFC under FIFA guidelines. FIFA stated that nominees must come from nations that ‘have never, or rarely, had the opportunity to participate in Olympic Games or World Cups’.
FIFA also requested that Oceania nominate different countries for the male and female tournaments.
Vanuatu were selected following the establishment of a youth academy as part of the FIFA Goal Football Programme while Papua New Guinea were chosen on the back of strong performances over the past couple of years.
These successes included a gold medal at the XIII South Pacific Games in Samoa in 2007, a competition that is part of the Olympic movement.