The Portuguese American Football Federation (FPFA) wants to finalize the attribution of public utility status in 2024 to form a flag football team and aim for the Los Angeles’2028 Olympic Games, the president told Lusa.
As Rui Pedro Soares, who presides over the association that is “in the final phase of submitting the request for recognition of public utility status”, explained to Lusa, the expectation is that this will be submitted at the beginning of 2024 so that it can act later that year.
The announcement that flag football, a non-contact aspect of American football, whose dominant discipline is called tackle football, will be an Olympic sport in Los Angeles’ 2028 requires that “you have to be quick to lead a good team”.
“Monday’s good news was, in a way, expected. The committee that has been organizing flag football in Portugal [está em] talks to officially hold the championship through the federation. In the same year, we want to create the national team, and we hope to be in Los Angeles in 2028”, summarizes the association leader.
This discipline has been implemented in Portugal, says Rui Pedro Soares, since 2013, and on November 5th Porto will host the next national tournament, the first since the announcement of entry into the Olympic program.
As for the establishment of the federation, this first request was rejected in 2018, “because some points were not met”, and the objective is now to pass the test to be able to aspire to be in Los Angeles.
The association already brings together more than 500 players affiliated with the tackle variant, in which the 13 editions of the championship demonstrate that the sport “has grown a lot”, with the last final, in June, bringing together more than a thousand spectators in Figueira da Foz.
“It is also the federation’s objective that flag football, as it has no contact, is integrated and recognized in school sport”, says Rui Pedro Soares.
Flag football enters Los Angeles’ 2028 alongside cricket, lacrosse, squash and baseball/softball.
The collective modality will therefore enter the Olympic Games and also the Paralympics in 2028, six years after debuting at the World Games, as a guest discipline.
2023-10-19 12:42:06
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