In the beggining of december, Gothia Cup paid a visit to Ziad Saade and his Beirut FA. The goal of this trip was to learn more about Ziad’s academy and meet other asociations and schools and tell them about Gothia Cup.

Beirut FA's training fields

On july 15th 2006, Beirut FA was on its way to Gothenburg and the Gothia Cup for the very first time. All air fares and visas were cleared. For the first time in history , a team from Lebanon was going to participate in Gothia Cup. This same day, the first bombs fell over Beirut. A terrified coach calls the Gothia Cup’s offices and lets us know that it is impossible to fly out of Lebanon as the airport had been destroyed. He tells us that he will try to get to Syria and fly out from Damascus. Some hours later the coach calls again to let us know that it did not work, the only communicating bridge had also been destroyed in the attacks. But he did’nt want to give up yet, their last option was to get to Cypress by sea and fly out from there. Unfurtunately even this option did not go through and the 30 youngsters that had been looking forward to this trip for the past year, could see their dream vanish in front of them.
One year later, on july 14th 2007, The founder of Beirut FA Ziad Saade arrives in Swedish grounds; with him are 3 teams and approximately 40 kids ready to play football.

In 1999 Ziad Saade took his degree in IT Ingeneering, but his burning interest in football was so great that he could not see himself sitting in front of a computer all day. He decides at 22 years old to apply for a position as a Physical Education teacher at the AUST (American University of Science and Technology). During his time there he learns everything about how football works in Lebanon and how to organize asociations among other things. With this new skills, in 2003, Ziad opens the football academy Beirut FA. Today the academy trains approximately 300 youngsters and has been participating in Gothia Cup the past three years.

Gothia Cup’s marketing director Niclas Andersson refers to his visit to Lebanon in a very positive way. ”Lebanon is a very beautiful country and the people is very friendly, although the football in Lebanon has to develop some more, they are on a very good path towards great improvement.”- says Niclas. ”Most of the country’s football clubs have more teams playing in the leagues and the expansion of the sports sector’s infrastructure is getting better and faster” adds the directive. He sees this visit as a success and is proud of the new relations established in Lebanon, he hopes that more teams from this country have the chance to travel to Göteborg and the Gothia Cup