For about ten years, Blind Football has been conquering its audience. It presents blind and visually impaired sportsmen during national and international competitions in which each encounter shows the development and considerable evolution of game practising as well as a higher quality of the show.
After Manchester, after Malaga in 2005 and Athens 2007, Nantes will be the sports scene of the next European Blind Football Championship in June and July 2009.
France and more especially sports world is honoured and proud to welcome the different Blind Football teams from the European continent. As in all sports, sports act and celebration with the audience will be the main elements of the show. We are certain that this exceptional adventure will be shared with Nantes audience and many more people.
If Blind Football is the football adapted for visually impaired people, this sport is composed of two different approaches for two groups of sportsmen: blind players and visually impaired players.
Although they seem different from the point of view of the show, both are pillars of this sport.
Blind Football in Nantes
The Loire has always been a peaceful and sweet region but also a working region. There, arms force is as important as heart kindness. In this region that joins Atlantic coast with the Loire, Nantes is an open town where economic, sports and cultural activities go together.
Nantes welcomes the European Blind Football Championship with an intense joy as when it welcomed World Cup matches ten years ago.
We hope that spectators will be different after seeing these games.
European Blind Football Championship are within the competence of IBSA (International Blind Sports Association) that has designated France (French Disabled Sports Federation) as host country. And, in the same way, French Disabled Sports Federation has chosen Nantes town to welcome the next European Blind Football Championships.
B2/B3 Blind Football: Visually impaired players!!!
For nearly two years, we are facing great difficulties with regard to B2/B3 Blind Football development. In spite of a more and more impressive practising, the recognition of this category, at international level, is not a priority for some countries.
For a person who has a good vision, it is not possible to imagine what a « visually impaired » person, who practises Blind Football,really sees. Effectively, for most people, it is a person who wears glasses that anyway are sufficient to improve his vision!. However, we should point out that there are various vision types induced by visually impairment.
In B2/B3 Blind Football, as opposed to B1 Blind Football, the visually impaired people has no blindfold on the eyes. Nothing differentiates him from a classic football player apart from his difficulty to appreciate forms, contrasts, distances… This handicap is considerable. But very often invisible. The one that is visually impaired is therefore “torn between two worlds”: the world of the people who have a good vision and, on the other hand, the world of blind people. A complex situation for which we mobilize. Therefore, our goal is “the european podium”, in order to attract the general public attention on this category of “handicap situation”.