Ronaldinho 3v3 World Championship China 2024

December 1st - December 2nd 2024, Qingdao China. The Ronaldinho 3v3 Street Football World Tournament took place.

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So What is This Event?

Ronaldinho and his team built this event out as a world championships where the three best 3v3 players from 24 countries around would compete against each other in a single elimination event. Games were four quarters long with 5 minute quarters, with 1v1 golden goal if the match was goalless after 20 minutes.

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Why China was Selected as The Host Country

As this tournament is being built up as a yearly world finals style event, countries were given the opportunity to bid on hosting the event. Before it was opened to public bidding, China was offered the rights. They accepted, placed a bid, and have agreed to host the first 3 years of the event in Qingdao, China. A more technical look at the situation shows that China was selected due to common interests from all parties in building the event from scratch, essentially China was involved in creating the event in some way shape or form. The event was built for China in the simplest terms.
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Was The Event a Success?

That's a tough one. On one hand the event went ahead with all athletes flown over, accommodated, fed, transported all for free, as well as competing. That was all a success. The event also went ahead and was completed, also marking success. However, it wasn't a complete success. A complete structure reshuffle the night before kick-off left every single team in bad spirits. The structure changed from 6 pools of 4 teams with each team playing 3 group games (top 2 proceeding to knockout stages), to a single elimination event (with the final 6 teams being placed in pools of 3 to quality for finals). What this means is that 50% of the teams travelled all the way to China for a maximum of 20 minutes of game time, with 75% playing less than the expected 60 minutes minimum. No matter which way you look at it this isn't anything but awful for every team even the top 6.

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Results

1st - Spain

2nd - Colombia

3rd - Netherlands

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Would we go Back?

Yes. Overall I believe that this event was a first attempt by a new federation that competes with the likes of ISFA. Competition is a great thing for any sport, the only issue is to ensure that this competition is healthy and results in better events and opportunities for the whole community. There were definitely major issues, but so many more positives that can be taken. We will be back with SSC & Australia, and we'll try for gold this time.