UAE’s Maher Ahmed Ali and Abdullah Mohamed Melfi to meet Pepsi stars Fabregas, Messi and Henry
"PEPSI STREET SKILLS 2008" GCC WINNERS OFF TO EUROPE
Pepsi has concluded Pepsi Street Skills 2008 events held in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman. The audience voted right after the last phase of the challenge. The 50 participants held breathe anticipating the results of voting by the audience in all Gulf Countries.
During the audience voting phase, the participants were 10 from UAE, 20 from Saudi Arabia, 10 from Kuwait and 10 from Oman. During this phase, each participant has demonstrated 2 minutes of skills before the jury taped on video. The jury has evaluated each participant’s performance and innovation through points system. The video clips of all participants were uploaded to the official website of Pepsi www.pepsiarabia.com where the audience had the chance to review the performances and vote accordingly.
The voting phase concluded 12 final winners from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman. Maher Ahmed Ali and Abdullah Mohamed Melfi from the UAE; Mohammad Saleh Maymoony, Adel Jamal, Ahmad Mohamed Fairaq, Saeed Bashath, Mohamed Abdulaziz Al Mouwaizry and Ahmad Noor Adam from Saudi Arabia; Mohamed Assheq and Omar Jamal from Kuwait; Asaad Abdullah Al Shbaibi and Badr Salim Al Yaqoubi from the Sultanate of Oman.
“The high standard of athletic skills displayed by all participants in the 2008 challenge fully reflects the passion and dedication of the Gulf region’s young footballers and the final 12 winners are indeed worthy representatives of their respective countries.” Said Mr. Ibrahim Binaquil, GCC Senior Brand Manager–Colas at PepsiCo International. He also went on to thank the enormous number of members of the public who logged on to the Pepsi website to vote for their favorite contestant.
The winners will travel for five days visiting the marvelous cities of London and Barcelona that are reckoned to be the most important cities on the agenda of worldwide football events. They will be meeting the Pepsi Stars Fabregas, Messi and Henry.
About the phase prior to the voting phase held in Oman, Mr. Binaquil stated "The participants were all happy to perform, for them, football is not just a sport rather it’s a dream and a passion. This is the only indication of how dear football is to them. We determined the distinguished participant by his high spirit, continuous optimism, his self confidence and how accommodating is he."
Because of the huge number of young hopefuls who wanted to take part in the competition, Pepsi provided convenient alternative methods of applying for registration through phone, Pepsi’s website www.pepsiarabia.com and the organizing company’s website www.axemevents.com.
Pepsi Street Football Skills 2008 implements the highest standards of screening to select the best players, adopting techniques from last year’s challenge such as overcoming time and distance by using video for live communication between the players and the judges. A points system is used to evaluate the skills and capabilities of the contestants as they play in matches on private football fields measuring 40 x 30 meters.
Mr. Ibrahim Binaquil concluded "The Pepsi Stars team are preparing for the dream Europe trip to meet the Pepsi Stars. At our end, we will not stop here! We will proceed covering our winners' news throughout their trip in Europe and bring you all their news from London and Barcelona at every place they go to as we have prepared a special agenda in order to make the best out of their trip".
Pepsi aims to commit to support and prepare the next generation of national football stars, and providing them with the highest levels of training with all the necessary experiences which can be implemented in their future career in professional football enabling them to compete at an international level.
