World Cup tournament for five-a-side

THE International Hockey Federation (FIH) announced a few revolutionary measures yesterday, including having a 5s World Cup in 2023.

That is interesting news for Malaysia who created history by winning the five-a-side gold in the Youth Olympics Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina last year.

Then, Malaysia beat India 4-2 in the final.

Continental Hockey 5s tournaments will be organised as qualifiers, where 16 teams per gender will take part in the first World Cup.

The FIH statement read: “In order to promote competition between teams from different continents every year, FIH will launch in 2021 an annual event for the highest ranked teams not competing in the FIH Hockey Pro League.

“It will be an eight-team tournament in a single venue for each gender.”

FIH will also make the tabulation of world rankings much more interactive. The world body will launch a new match-based world rankings system and this new system will:

1. Increase opportunities for all national associations to gain ranking points that accurately reflect current performance.

2. Provide weekly rankings and live narrative to every official match.

3. Remove subjectivity and create a system that is fair to all.

4. Encourage playing official international matches to gain ranking points.

The change in collecting ranking points will benefit Asian teams who are finding it hard to qualify for the World Cup and Olympics.