Ahli and Al-Nasr, the two Saudi teams in the GCC Champions League semifinal, qualified automatically to the final of the championship after the World football body FIFA suspended Kuwait on Friday. FIFA suspended the federations of Kuwait and Samoa earlier in the day after they failed to hold a general assembly and for management problems. The two Kuwaiti representatives Al-Qadsiayah and Al-Salmiyah were scheduled to meet on Oct. 25 in their second-leg match of the semifinal. The first-leg match, however, saw Al-Qadsiayah beat Al-Salmiyah 4-3 last Sunday. Saudi sides Al-Ahli and Al-Nasr who were preparing to play their first-leg match in Jeddah will now meet in the final on Oct. 27 in the first leg while the second-leg match will be held in Riyadh on Nov. 3. According to Ahmed Mirza, Assistant Secretary General of the Organizing Committee on the GCC Champions League, members of the Committee met after the FIFA decision and decided to slash the semifinals matches and considered Al-Ahli and Al-Nasr clashes as finals to be played on a two-leg basis. “We had given a supplementary delay” to the Kuwaitis before finally suspending them, FIFA President Sepp Blatter said at FIFA's Executive Committee meeting in Zurich. Kuwait's federation was to hold its general assembly meeting in September but delayed it due to Ramadan but since no meeting took place, Blatter said the Kuwaitis have been “definitively suspended” from international matches. The clash between FIFA and the football federation in Kuwait began when FIFA requested Kuwait to name five members to the local body while government laws in the Gulf country appointed about 14 members, and this is what FIFA considers interference of political authorities in football federation. Kuwaiti teams will now not be able to participate in any recognized competition. The FIFA decision also hit the Kuwaiti teams in the Arab Champions League (ACL) as Al-Qadsiayah, Al-Salmiyah and Al-Arabi will be out of the first round of the competition which kick off next week. Al-Hazm of Saudi Arabia will qualify to the second round of the competition as the team was scheduled to play the Kuwaiti side Al-Qadsiayah. Al-Hilal of Yemen and Sudan's Al-Hilal will move automatically to the second round of the ACL as they were placed in the competition to play Salmiyah and Al-Arabi respectively. The suspension, however, will also include banning Kuwait National team from participating in the 19th GCC Cup of Nations which will be held in Muscat in the beginning of the 2009. FIFA also said Friday it was confident that the global credit crunch would not hit the 2010 or 2014 World Cups, revealing football's world body had concluded a $650 million insurance package to cover the events. Beckham confirms reports England midfielder David Beckham finally confirmed on Friday he's in talks for a short-term loan to AC Milan in early 2009. The former England captain will play his final game of the MLS season for the Los Angeles Galaxy in Los Angeles on Sunday and intends to be back in a Galaxy shirt by the start of next season in late March or early April. __
