Hockey World League to start dribbling two days after Olympics

The World League, a four-round event spread over two years, will feature more than 60 national men and women's sides competing in one structured event with the top eight ranked nations coming into the picture one year after the tournament's launch.

For teams like India, currently placed 10th the international men's rankings, it will be a second round entry into the competition which will now become the qualifying competition for the World Cup and Olympic Games.

As 12 qualifying slots are on offer for the 2014 World Cup, most nations will compete in the World League, which the International Hockey Federation (FIH) is confident will turn out to be the biggest thing in world hockey in decades.

New Delhi is among the 19 venues shortlisted by the FIH for the league. The FIH has been planning about an international league for more than one and a half decades, but this is the first step taken in this direction.

Although the FIH did not give any specific details about the financial structure or the commercial partners it had secured for such an ambitious project.

"I am proud to launch the Hockey World League," FIH President Leandro Negre said last evening, using the backdrop of one of the grandest Olympic hockey events to introduce the new competition, which begins on Aug 14.

The first round of the World Hockey League will comprise 11 tournaments, with the landmark opening game being played in the Czech Republic between the women's national teams of Scotland and Turkey.

"This has been a vision of the FIH