⚠️ [ FAKE NEWS ] : The news of India pulling out of U-17 Women's World Cup as claimed by the Ghana news outlet are false. 🇮🇳✅️ @wineofwinsfield #U17WCC #AIFF https://t.co/Hb8RbLbYSa— Sevens Football (@sevensftbl) October 19, 2020 Apparently it's false news that India has withdrawn from hosting the tournament. No word from FIFA either way.
Oh, good, a no-name Twitter account says "Fake News" and now all the problems have gone away. Their source is freelance writer Rutvij Joshi - the AIFF and Fifa have issued no information after the rumour's been spreading for days.
Let's just say there's one source saying they've withdrawn and another saying they haven't. Neither source are all well known or credible.
The even less credible Fifa had this to say this last week... "Caf Competitions Division had a meeting with their Fifa counterpart to inquire about the dates and venue of the final tournament of Fifa U-17 WWC-2021. "Therefore, Fifa indicated that the dates and venue of the said final tournament are not yet confirmed." - (Goal.com) Hence why CAF postponed its games. Public discussion in India is going toward closed-doors (reported in July) and another postponement (reported Sep/Oct). The host withdrawing like Panama is plausible, but may be a misplaced rumour. But it's terrible form for journos to shout "Fox News Fake News", i.e. "This Is A Deliberate Misinformation Campaign", when they provide even less information themselves.
With the Olympics likely happening, there's a small window to postpone this again (and the U-20). Maybe bump both tournaments by two months. If not, I see both getting cancelled.
It's been surreal here (NZ) in recent weeks, the Australia men's rugby team came for an international match with a crowd, as if nothing had happened - that's at Eden Park, the stadium that'll host the Women's World Cup opening game in 2023. Even with being on islands, and people being quite careful, there have been some bad outbreaks - Melbourne's has lasted for about 7 months, and New Zealand has had 2 lockdowns. I think the FAs would be willing to help out, but it might need legal changes to let the teams in (as well as the hard part of actually organizing it)... Apparently, the only new arrivals who are now in NZ that aren't from Australasia are an essential fishing crew from Russia. And of course everyone needs to quarantine, and, well, yeah, it's a lot to plan...!