Argentine Football Association
The Argentine Football Association is the governing body of football in Argentina based in Buenos Aires. It organises the lower divisions of Argentine league system, including domestic cups Copa Argentina and Supercopa Argentina; the body manages all the Argentina national teams, including the Senior, U-20, U-17 and Olympic squads. Secondly, it organizes the amateur leagues for women, youth and other local leagues, as well as the national women's team; the AFA organised all the Primera División championships from 1893 to 2016–17. From the 2017–18 season the "Superliga Argentina", an entity, administrated independently and has its own statute, took over the Primera División championships; the Superliga is contractually linked with the main football body. The Argentine Association Football League was founded on 21 February 1893 by Alexander Watson Hutton, considered "the father" of Argentine football; the Argentine Association is the oldest in South America and one of the oldest to be formed outside Europe.
In 1906 Florencio Martínez de Hoz became the first Argentine-born president of the association. In 1912 the president of Gimnasia y Esgrima de Buenos Aires, Ricardo Aldao, broke up with the association establishing an own league, the "Federación Argentina de Football" which organized a parallel tournament; some teams moved to the FAF were Gimnasia y Esgrima, Estudiantes de La Plata and Atlanta. The league lasted until 1914 when rejoining Asociación Argentina de Football forming a unique league for the 1915 season; the second dissident league was formed in 1919 and named "Asociación Amateurs de Football", organizing its own championships until 1926 when it merged to official association. The dissident league included some of the most prominent teams such as River Plate, Racing and San Lorenzo, with the exception of Boca Juniors that remained in the official "Asociación Argentina de Football"; when both leagues merged for the 1927 season, the association was again renamed to "Asociación Amateur Argentina de Football" until the professionalization of the sport in 1931 when it switched to "Liga Argentina de Football".
The first round of the created professional championship was on 31 May 1931. Despite football turning professional in Argentina, some clubs wanted to remain amateur so they formed a new league, the "Asociación de Football Amateur y Profesionales", which organized a parallel tournament until 1934 when the dissident association merged with LAF on 3 November 1934 to form the "Asociación del Football Argentino" which has remained since. In 2015, during the presidential elections to elect a new president for the body, there were two candidates to occupy Julio Humberto Grondona's chair, Marcelo Tinelli –who wanted a change in how things were going, like eliminating corruption between some clubs and the AFA– and Luis Segura, who had taken charge after Grondona's death, with the intention of extending his mandate. With 75 presidents of different Argentine clubs voting, the day of the elections something went wrong when the final count resulted in a draw of 38 to 38; the explanation given was that one of the electors put a double vote and that mistake was not reported.
As a result, the executive committee decided to postpone the election. After some meetings to put an end to the conflict, both candidates agreed to have another election in June 2016. In June 2016, AFA president Luis Segura was charged with "aggravated administrative fraud". Segura has been replaced on an interim basis by Damián Dupiellet. In 2017, the association approved the creation of a new entity, named "Superliga Argentina de Fútbol", which would take over the organisation of Primera División championship; the main European football leagues served as inspiration for the creation of the Superliga. The 2016–17 Primera División championship was the last tournament organised by the AFA. From the 2017–18 season, the "Superliga Argentina", an entity administrated by itself with its own statute, took over the organisation of Primera División championships since on; the body has been renamed several times since its establishment in 1893, in most of cases translating into Spanish the original British names.
The list of names is the following: Argentine Association Football League Argentine Football Association Asociación Argentina de Football Asociación Amateur Argentina de Football Asociación de Football Amateurs y Profesionales Asociación del Fútbol Argentino The list of official competitions organized by the Argentine Football Association since its creation in 1893 are: The following table include competitions organized by dissident associations. Argentine Association Football League Federación Argentina de Football Asociación Amateurs de Football Liga Argentina de Football Superliga Argentina Official site Argentina at FIFA site
Santos, São Paulo
Santos is a municipality in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, founded in 1546 by the Portuguese nobleman Brás Cubas. It is located on the island of São Vicente, which harbors both the city of Santos and the city of São Vicente, on the mainland, it is the main city in the metropolitan region of Baixada Santista. The population is 433,966 in an area of 280.67 km2. The city is home to the Coffee Museum, where world coffee prices were once negotiated. There is an association football memorial, dedicated to the city's greatest players, which includes Pelé, who played for the Santos Futebol Clube, its beachfront garden, 5,335 m in length, figures in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest beachfront garden in the world. The exportation of coffee from the Port of Santos gave rise to the city and accounted for the wealth of the city at the turn of the 20th century. Exportation and importation through its port have made it the modern city one finds today and turned it into the indispensable outlet for the production of the powerhouse, São Paulo State.
Adorning the landscape of the port city are the canals that are over a hundred years old. In 1899, Santos was the point of entry for the bubonic plague into Brazil. In 1924, it became the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santos. In October 2006, light crude oil was discovered off the coast in the Santos basin. Santos became a tourist city from the 1910s onwards, with the construction of the International Hotel and Parque Balneário and the construction of the beach front gardens in 1935; until today, tourism in Santos is one of the main economic activities linked to beaches and historical heritage. Santos is about 79 km from the metropolis São Paulo, capital of the state São Paulo; the municipality contains the Laje de Santos Marine State Park, created in 1993, the first marine park to be created by the state. It is divided into two distinct geographic areas: the urbanized island and the continental area, about 70% of, protected; the areas differ radically in terms of population and geography.
Santos lies on the island of São Vicente, whose territory is divided with the neighboring municipality of São Vicente. It is a densely urbanized area of 39.4 km2 that houses all the inhabitants of the city. It includes a flat area - Plain Coastal extension of the State of São Paulo - which has altitudes that go above twenty meters above sea level, an area composed of isolated hills called the Mass of São Vicente, the former home and endowed an urban illegal occupation with a mix of families characterized by high and low incomes, whose height does not exceed 200 meters above sea level; the flat region of the island is completely devoid of native vegetation, although in the north region of the island - in the Alemoa, Chico de Paula and Saboó neighbourhoods - there are still remnants of mangroves. Before the occupation of the area of the island by'chácaras' - rural residences, subsequently by urbanization, there was a vast flooded land covered by mangroves, the native Atlantic Forest, coastal vegetation.
On the city hills one can still find vast areas covered by the native Atlantic Forest, in spite of the existing chácaras and banana harvesting farms in the area. The'Lagoa da Saudade', a pond located in one of the aforementioned hills, Morro Nova Cintra, was known to host a kind of caiman; the lagoon is a popular destination among families in the city due to its playgrounds, barbecue kiosks, picnic spots and green areas. The disordered occupation of the hills represents both an environmental as well as a geological risk: the deforestation leads to frequent landslides from January to March, the traditional rainy season in the region. Most rivers in the island were channeled when engineer Saturnino de Brito designed the system of canals in the city; as examples, we can cite the rivers Dois Rios and Ribeirao dos Soldados, nowadays referred by santistas as the'Canal 4' on Avenue Siqueira Campos. Major water courses cut the island in the north, such as the Rio de São Jorge, which suffers from the problems of pollution and silting due to the occupation of its banks by slums.
Despite the fact that it is located just outside the tropics, Santos has a tropical rainforest climate with no real dry season. Tropical rainforest climates are found near the equator, so Santos featuring this type of climate is an exceptional situation. All months of the year averages more than 60 mm of rainfall during the course of the year. Santos features warm weather throughout the year, though June in Santos is somewhat cooler than January; the average temperature in the city during the month of June is 23 °C, while the average temperature in January is 28 °C. Precipitation in Santos is high, amounting to 2,081 mm annually. Santos lies in one of the few isolated regions of Brazil outside of the tropical Amazon Basin that receive more than 2,000 mm of total average precipitation annually, although nearby Ubatuba 140 km to the east-northeast, is wetter than Santos, receiving an average of 2,645 mm of precipitation annually; the Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Af".
The Port of Santos is the biggest seaport in Latin America, which handled 96 million tons and 2.7 million TEUs in 2010. It has large industrial complexes and shipping centers, which handle a large portion of the world's coffee exports, as well as a number of other Brazilian exports including steel, cars, oranges, ba
2004 FIFA Futsal World Championship
The 2004 edition of the FIFA Futsal World Championship was held between November 21 and December 5 in Taiwan. It was the fifth World Championship held under the aegis of football's world governing body; the venues were National Taiwan University Sports Center in Taipei City and Linkou Gymnasium in Taipei County. Spain won the tournament for their 2nd straight title; the top 10 scorers from the 2004 FIFA Futsal World Cup are as follows: FIFA Futsal World Championship Chinese Taipei 2004, FIFA.com FIFA Technical Report
Brazil
Brazil the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At 8.5 million square kilometers and with over 208 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the fifth most populous. Its capital is Brasília, its most populated city is São Paulo; the federation is composed of the union of the 26 states, the Federal District, the 5,570 municipalities. It is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language and the only one in the Americas. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 kilometers, it borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile and covers 47.3% of the continent's land area. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to diverse wildlife, a variety of ecological systems, extensive natural resources spanning numerous protected habitats; this unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, is the subject of significant global interest and debate regarding deforestation and environmental protection.
Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro. In 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system; the ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, now called the National Congress. The country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup d'état. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, after which civilian governance resumed. Brazil's current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. Due to its rich culture and history, the country ranks thirteenth in the world by number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Brazil is considered an advanced emerging economy. It has the ninth largest GDP in the world by nominal, eight and PPP measures, it is one of the world's major breadbaskets, being the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years. It is classified as an upper-middle income economy by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country, with the largest share of global wealth in Latin America. Brazil is a regional power and sometimes considered a great or a middle power in international affairs. On account of its international recognition and influence, the country is subsequently classified as an emerging power and a potential superpower by several analysts. Brazil is a founding member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Union of South American Nations, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, it is that the word "Brazil" comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast.
In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil given the etymology "red like an ember", formed from brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a deep red dye, it was valued by the European textile industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. Throughout the 16th century, massive amounts of brazilwood were harvested by indigenous peoples along the Brazilian coast, who sold the timber to European traders in return for assorted European consumer goods; the official Portuguese name of the land, in original Portuguese records, was the "Land of the Holy Cross", but European sailors and merchants called it the "Land of Brazil" because of the brazilwood trade. The popular appellation eclipsed and supplanted the official Portuguese name; some early sailors called it the "Land of Parrots". In the Guarani language, an official language of Paraguay, Brazil is called "Pindorama"; this was the name the indigenous population gave to the region, meaning "land of the palm trees".
Some of the earliest human remains found in the Americas, Luzia Woman, were found in the area of Pedro Leopoldo, Minas Gerais and provide evidence of human habitation going back at least 11,000 years. The earliest pottery found in the Western Hemisphere was excavated in the Amazon basin of Brazil and radiocarbon dated to 8,000 years ago; the pottery was found near Santarém and provides evidence that the tropical forest region supported a complex prehistoric culture. The Marajoara culture flourished on Marajó in the Amazon delta from 800 CE to 1400 CE, developing sophisticated pottery, social stratification, large populations, mound building, complex social formations such as chiefdoms. Around the time of the Portuguese arrival, the territory of current day Brazil had an estimated indigenous population of 7 million people semi-nomadic who subsisted on hunting, fishing and migrant agriculture; the indigenous population of Brazil comprised several large indigenous ethnic groups. The Tupí people were subdivided into the Tupiniquins and Tupinambás, there were many subdivisions of the other gro
FIFA
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association is an organization which describes itself as an international governing body of association football, fútsal, beach soccer, eFootball. FIFA is responsible for the organization of football's major international tournaments, notably the World Cup which commenced in 1930 and the Women's World Cup which commenced in 1991. FIFA was founded in 1904 to oversee international competition among the national associations of Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, its membership now comprises 211 national associations. Member countries must each be members of one of the six regional confederations into which the world is divided: Africa, Europe, North & Central America and the Caribbean and South America. Although FIFA does not control the rules of football, that being the responsibility of the International Football Association Board, it is responsible for both the organization of a number of tournaments and their promotion, which generate revenue from sponsorship.
In 2017, FIFA had revenues of over US $734 million, for a net loss of $189 million, had cash reserves of over US$930 million. Reports by investigative journalists have linked FIFA leadership with corruption and vote-rigging related to the election of FIFA president Sepp Blatter and the organization's decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively; these allegations led to the indictments of nine high-ranking FIFA officials and five corporate executives by the U. S. Department of Justice on charges including racketeering, wire fraud, money laundering. On 27 May 2015, several of these officials were arrested by Swiss authorities, who were launching a simultaneous but separate criminal investigation into how the organization awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cups; those among these officials who were indicted in the U. S. are expected to be extradited to face charges there as well. Many officials were suspended by FIFA's ethics committee including Michel Platini. In early 2017 reports became public about FIFA president Gianni Infantino attempting to prevent the re-elections of both chairmen of the ethics committee, Cornel Borbély and Hans-Joachim Eckert, during the FIFA congress in May 2017.
On May 9, 2017, following Infantino's proposal, FIFA Council decided not to renew the mandates of Borbély and Eckert. Together with the chairmen, 11 of 13 committee members were removed; the need for a single body to oversee association football became apparent at the beginning of the 20th century with the increasing popularity of international fixtures. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association was founded in the rear of the headquarters of the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques at the Rue Saint Honoré 229 in Paris on 21 May 1904; the French name and acronym are used outside French-speaking countries. The founding members were the national associations of Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland; that same day, the German Football Association declared its intention of affiliating through a telegram. The first president of FIFA was Robert Guérin. Guérin was replaced in 1906 by Daniel Burley Woolfall from England, by a member of the association; the first tournament FIFA staged, the association football competition for the 1908 Olympics in London was more successful than its Olympic predecessors, despite the presence of professional footballers, contrary to the founding principles of FIFA.
Membership of FIFA expanded beyond Europe with the application of South Africa in 1909, Argentina in 1912, Canada and Chile in 1913, the United States in 1914. During World War II, with many players sent off to war and the possibility of travel for international fixtures limited, the organization's survival was in doubt. Post-war, following the death of Woolfall, the organisation was run by Dutchman Carl Hirschmann, it was saved from extinction but at the cost of the withdrawal of the Home Nations, who cited an unwillingness to participate in international competitions with their recent World War enemies. The Home Nations resumed their membership; the FIFA collection is held by the National Football Museum at Urbis in England. The first World Cup was held in 1930 in Uruguay. FIFA is headquartered in Zürich, is an association established under the law of Switzerland. FIFA's supreme body is the FIFA Congress, an assembly made up of representatives from each affiliated member association; each national football association has one vote, regardless of footballing strength.
The Congress assembles in ordinary session once every year, extraordinary sessions have been held once a year since 1998. The congress makes decisions relating to FIFA's governing statutes and their method of implementation and application. Only the Congress can pass changes to FIFA's statutes; the congress approves the annual report, decides on the acceptance of new national associations and holds elections. Congress elects the President of FIFA, its general secretary, the other members of the FIFA Council in the year following the FIFA World Cup. FIFA Council — called the FIFA Executive Committee and chaired by the president — is the main decision-making body of the organisation in the intervals of congress; the council is composed of 37 people: the president. The Executive Committee is the body that decides w
Brasília
Brasília is the federal capital of Brazil and seat of government of the Federal District. The city is located atop the Brazilian highlands in the country's center-western region, it was founded on April 1960, to serve as the new national capital. Brasília is estimated to be Brazil's 3rd most populous city. Among major Latin American cities, Brasília has the highest GDP per capita. Brasília was planned and developed by Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer and Joaquim Cardozo in 1956 to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro to a more central location; the landscape architect was Roberto Burle Marx. The city's design divides it into numbered blocks as well as sectors for specified activities, such as the Hotel Sector, the Banking Sector and the Embassy Sector. Brasília was chosen as a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its modernist architecture and uniquely artistic urban planning, it has been named "City of Design" by UNESCO in October 2017 and has been part of the Creative Cities Network since then. All three branches of Brazil's federal government are centered in the city: executive and judiciary.
Brasília hosts 124 foreign embassies. The city's international airport connects it to all other major Brazilian cities and many international destinations, is the third busiest airport in Brazil. Brasília is the most populous Portuguese-speaking capital city, it was one of the main host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and hosted some of the football matches during the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. The city has a unique status in Brazil, as it is an administrative division rather than a legal municipality like other cities in Brazil. Although Brasília is used as a synonym for the Federal District through synecdoche, the Federal District is composed of 31 administrative regions, only one of, the area of the planned city called Plano Piloto; the rest of the Federal District is considered by IBGE to make up Brasília's metro area. From 1763 until 1960, Rio de Janeiro was Brazil's capital. At this time, resources tended to be centered in Brazil's southeast region near Rio de Janeiro and most of its population was concentrated near to the Atlantic Coast.
Brasília's geographically central location fostered a more regionally neutral federal capital. An article of the country's first republican constitution dating back to 1891 stated the capital should be moved from Rio de Janeiro to a place close to the country's center; the plan was conceived in 1827 by José Bonifácio, an advisor to Emperor Pedro I. He presented a plan to the General Assembly of Brazil for a new city called Brasília, with the idea of moving the capital westward from the populated southeastern corridor; the bill was not enacted because Pedro I dissolved the Assembly. According to legend, Italian saint Don Bosco in 1883 had a dream in which he described a futuristic city that fitted Brasília's location. In Brasília today, many references of Bosco, who founded the Salesian order, are found throughout the city and one church parish in the city bears his name. In 1955 Juscelino Kubitschek was elected president of Brazil. Upon taking office in January, 1956, in response to his campaign pledge, he initiated the planning and construction of the new capital.
In 1957 an international jury selected Lúcio Costa's plan to guide the construction of Brazil’s new capital, Brasília. Costa's plan was not as detailed as some of the plans presented by other architects and city planners, it did not include land use schedules, population charts or mechanical drawings, however, it was chosen by five out of six jurors because it had the features required to align the growth of a capital city Even though the initial plan was transformed over time, his plan oriented much of the construction and most of its features survived. Brasília's accession as the new capital and its designation for the development of an extensive interior region inspired the symbolism of the plan. Costa used a cross-axial design indicating the possession and conquest of this new place with a cross described by some as a dragonfly, an airplane or a bird. Costa's plan included the Monumental Axis and the Residential Axis; the Monumental Axis was assigned political and administrative activities and is considered the body of the city with the style and simplicity of its buildings, oversized scales, broad vistas and heights, producing the idea of Monumentality.
This axis includes the various ministries, national congress, presidential palace, supreme court building and the television and radio tower. The Residential Axis was intended to contain areas with intimate character and is considered the most important achievement of the plan; the urban design of the communal apartment blocks was based on Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse of 1935 and the superblocks on the North American Radburn layout from 1929. Visually, the blocks were intended to appear absorbed by the landscape because they were isolated by a belt of tall trees and lower vegetation. Costa attempted to introduce a Brazil, more equitable, he designed housing for the working classes, separated from the upper and middle-class housing and was visually different, with the intention of avoiding slums (f