Barcelona cancels academy football camp in Lefkoşa

Barcelona’s academy football camp, which was due to take place in Lefkoşa on 7–11 and 16–20 September, has been cancelled: the event page has disappeared from the club’s official website, and the location itself has been removed from Barcelona’s event map.

The club announced the camp on 4 August. The website stated that the sessions would be held at Near East University (Yakın Doğu Üniversitesi), while the location was listed as “Lefkoşa, Northern Cyprus”. The same link now shows neither the dates, address nor programme.

The cancellation was preceded by appeals from the Republic of Cyprus. Following consultations with UEFA, the Cyprus Football Association (KOP) wrote to the Royal Spanish Football Federation, demanding that the camp either be relocated or not be held on the island.

The far-right ELAM party in the Republic of Cyprus said it had achieved its goal: on 23 August, it called for the camp to be cancelled, and now welcomes the “swift response of the government and everyone who intervened”. The party promised to respond in the same way in the future — including to references to universities in the TRNC in the QS Top Universities world ranking labelled “Northern Cyprus”.

On the eve of the cancellation, TRNC President Tufan Erhürman, commenting on attempts to disrupt the camp, said that the participation of foreign clubs did not mean recognition, and that preventing children from playing football was “a defeat from the standpoint of humanity”.