An international football tournament which attracted juniors from top clubs around the world to Shrewsbury has been axed – with organisers blaming the recession.
The group which organises Shrewsbury International Soccer Tournament has pulled the plug after failing to get guarantees from North American teams that they would take part.
Grant Perry, chairman of Soccer Destinations which runs the competition, said there were no plans to revive the event in the future.
It has been run at Shrewsbury Sports Village for the past three years and has attracted junior teams from a host of Premier League and Football League clubs, as well as from decorated clubs such as River Plate of Argentina and Cruz Azul of Mexico. It gave a host of local youngsters the chance to pit their skills against potential stars of the future, and Shrewsbury Town also entered teams.
More than 100 teams of youngsters aged nine to 18 entered last year’s competition, but a number of professional clubs have since scaled back their activities due to the economic climate and doubts remain over the participation of foreign teams.
Mr Perry said: “It’s not happening this year – basically we can’t make it pay. Teams from North America aren’t travelling and a number of professional clubs that do attend are working under much stricter financial restrictions.
“Last year a number of American teams said they would play and then didn’t come, so we tried to get them to commit early and they weren’t prepared to do so. It’s different with the South American teams because we hosted them and they helped to attract quality Premier League teams to the event.
“It’s got to the point where we could have put something on but with the year we were facing we decided to call it a day. There are not any plans to bring it back for the foreseeable future. Had we not had this recession things might have been different but this is now a national problem - there used to be around 12 big junior tournaments in Britain but now there are only around five,” he added.
By Peter Kitchen
