KIA sends local team to World Cup

Dubai: Team Spartan won the KIA Champ into the Arena, a five-a-side soccer tournament sponsored by KIA, and earned a group travel package to the 2010 Fifa World Cup quarter-finals in South Africa.

Team Spartan won 2-0 in the final.

Al Majid Motors — sole distributors of KIA cars in the UAE — held the inaugural tournament in Dubai last month, which saw 24 teams battling it out for the first prize.

The indoor tournament was played at Deira International School's stadium.

Spartan's team captain, Sheriff Nagy, said: "As a team, we played consistently well over the two-day tournament."

Shehadeh Ahmad, Marketing and Business Development Manager at KIA Motors UAE, said: "The games were of a very high standard and all players showed great sportsmanship. We will definitely look into promoting football on a broader scale through events like this."

All participating teams were drawn out in to different pools of four teams for initial ‘round robin' games.

Teams from the different pools were seeded according to their round robin results and then advanced to the ‘knock out' stage, where the Spartans won the final round.

Warren van de Merwe, Managing Director, Super Sport, said: "The tournament was an amazing opportunity for football enthusiasts to use their skills to compete for a really fun prize."