In line with the UAE Pro League’s keenness to strengthen relations and bonds of friendship and cooperation with other football leagues around the world to achieve further progress, development and success, the UAE Pro League signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Israeli Professional Football League, with the aim of serving the most popular sport in both countries. This took place during a signing ceremony held on Monday morning, October 26th, via web video conferencing and was attended by His Excellency Abdulla Naser Al Junaibi, Chairman of the UAE Pro League, and His Excellency Erez Halfon, Chairman of the Israeli Professional Football League.
The announcement of this step, which is the first of its kind in the Middle East, comes within the framework of cooperation and increasing the chances of success and development of the sport in the two countries. This historic agreement is a step towards laying the foundations for cooperation and securing a joint mechanism to achieve practical steps aimed at developing all matters related to football. The terms of the Memorandum of Understanding include holding joint workshops to discuss ways to develop the marketing and promotional side of the competitions, in addition to keeping pace with everything related to sports and football development technology, as well as developing the technical aspect in the football sector.
In this regard, Abdulla Naser Al Junaibi, Chairman of the UAE Pro League said, “following the examples set by the wise leadership of the UAE, and the principles of humanity set by UAE’s founding father the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE Pro League is pleased to announce today the signing of a cooperation and partnership agreement with the Israeli Professional Football League. Over the decades, the UAE has proven to be a homeland of tolerance and a melting pot of the world's peoples. This Memorandum of Understanding will contribute towards the promotion of peace and strengthen cooperation and friendship in a way that serves the interest of football in both countries.” Junaibi added, “football has always been the most important and fast path to bring people together. These are the cooperation pillars we aim at through this agreement, through which we hope to achieve gains for both parties. We look forward to the contribution that this agreement would bring to establishing bilateral workshops to share experiences, research, and technology in football and the development of administrative and technical work. We also aim to organize joint activities between the two leagues and to assure cooperation to reinforce the economic - commercial – technological and technical sides between the two leagues.”
In turn, Erez Halfon, Chairman of the Israeli Professional Football League said, “football is the most popular sport not only in the world, but also in both Israel and the United Arab Emirates; The passion for football transcends religions, nations and races, and we have the ability to use it as a tool to build relationships and break down walls between people, of all genders, and of all races. I am proud and excited to take part in this event where we sign an agreement that will form a bridge between Israeli football and football in the UAE.” He added, “It shall not only be a bridge between football clubs, but shall also be a platform for a series of initiatives - business, technologies and above all - will be a bridge for the development of social and cultural ties between people from both sides.” He added, “the teams of the two organizations have been working for some time on plans for future collaborations in the fields of football promotion, sports technologies and social and commercial collaborations alike and it seems that there's more that unites us than divides us. We thank you and your team at the UAE Pro League for the friendship and cooperation and are sure that together its fruits will be seen soon. At the same time, we hope that soon we will have the opportunity to continue to forge collaborations in the field of football with our other neighbors as well.”
It is worth noting that the UAE Pro League was founded in 2008 and joined the World Leagues Forum in 2019, which had a major role in strengthening relations between the UAE and Israeli leagues.
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