Nice wins stateless World Cup in Sweden, refugees vanish
Stockholm (AFP) - The County of Nice won the inaugural World Cup for stateless people, regions and other non-FIFA affiliated teams on Sunday in northern Sweden as members of one refugee team disappeared.
The French county beat the Isle of Man in a tough final in Ostersund which ended in a draw and had to be decided by penalties which Nice won 5-3.
"We worked hard to get here and it's been a fantastic tournament," team captain Mansour Assoumani told Swedish radio's Sami language service.
Twelve teams from four continents competed in the week-long Confederation of Independent Football (CONIFA) World Cup, a new biannual tournament which aims to raise the profile of people, nations and regions which demand greater autonomy or independence and cannot compete under their preferred banner in the FIFA World Cup.
Just ahead of the final, a group of Darfurian refugee football players from camps on the Chad-Sudan border -- survivors of what has been described as a near-decade long genocide -- went missing according to local police.
"Several people are missing," Oestersund police spokeswoman Mona Litzell told AFP, adding that border police were opening an investigation.
The players from the Darfur United team reportedly went missing on Saturday after their last quarter final match where they were beaten 10-0 by Tamil Eelam, a team from the international Tamil Diaspora.
CONIFA president Per-Anders Blind said as many as six of the players -- who travelled to Sweden with the help of a US-based aid group -- may be missing and that one of them is believed to have relatives in neighbouring Norway.
Chad reportedly threatened to stop all football-related aid projects in the camps that house over 300,000 refugees if the players did not return from Sweden.
Soon after arriving at the tournament, several players told AFP that conditions in the camps were becoming intolerable due to the lack of food. They said they had felt under "house arrest" for the last decade with no chance of returning to their war-ravaged country due to the ongoing conflict.