CONIFA member County of Nice celebrated the free Monday on 25.05.2015 with the “Journée de La Selecioun” (engl: Day of the national team). The celebrations started early in the morning with a kid’s tournament to find the Under-11 County champion and ended in the first ever home match of the current World Champion, the Nice national team, against their local sporting rivals and close friends from Monaco.
The management of the County of Nice FA invited our general secretary Sascha Düerkop and his fiancée, who assisted our general secretary as photographer and by taking notes, over to Nice for the weekend to attend the festive day, meet the team to speak about the preparations for the Euros and last but not least to check out Nice and Monaco to be able to draw a picture to other teams interesting to play them at home later
Sascha arrived in Nice after a scenic, but exhausting, drive from Cologne on Friday evening and took the chance to explore the city center, the harbour and the old town of Nice on Saturday and drive down the “Corniche Basse” to Monaco just a few hours after the Monaco GP on Sunday. The French Riviera is not by accident known as one of the most beautiful areas in Europe. On top of the beautiful and scenic landscape and nature the unique mixture of French, Occitan and Italian culture, architecture, food and lifestyle adds a lot to the overall beauty of the area. This mixture is exactly what the whole County of Nice makes so special and unique.
The highlight of the visit was obviously the Journée de La Selecioun on the Monday and meeting the management of the County of Nice, Monaco’s FA Director Laurent Revollon, the Nicard national hero Alexy Bossetti and the parents of Formula One driver Jules Bianchi, who is still in coma after his horrible crash in Japan, and many more. Words can hardly describe the amazing atmosphere, the overwhelming hospitality and the great support of the Nicard people for their team – so our general secretary put together a small gallery of pictures below.
What remains of this trip is a good image of the beauty of Nice and a huge fascination about the passionate and perfectly friendly and hospitable people Sascha met everywhere in Nice. Besides that all final questions about the European Football Cup could be answered and the County of Nice will surely be perfectly prepared to win another title. We thank the County of Nice for the invitation and the amazing time our general secretary had during his long weekend. We will surely be back hopefully for many more football festivals taking place in Nice.
See you in Debrecen!
