Over 30 international players from the best football teams in the world will compete next Tuesday in the Match against Poverty, to be hosted this year by Olympiacos Piraeus Football Club, Greece. 
 
 Among the players gathered for the occasion by Ronaldo, Zinédine Zidane and Didier Drogba, all three Goodwill Ambassadors of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), are figurent Pavel Nedved, Gio Van Bronckhorst, Mahmadou Diarra and Raúl Albiol.



The friendly match is part of an annual series aimed at reducing poverty and achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals. The revenue generated by this event will go to support some 25 million people affected by the earthquake of Haiti in January and floods in Pakistan in July. Tens of thousands of people are expected on the evening of the match. It will be broadcast live on over 20 national and international television channels in order to transmit the following message "Team to end poverty now."


The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) gave their support for the match, whose aim is to show that football can help eradicate the scourges such as poverty, the school exclusion and inequality.


Match against poverty takes place every year since 2003 at the initiative of Zinédine Zidane and Ronaldo. Last January, the 7th edition drew a crowd of 55,000 spectators and has raised over half million euros (767,000 dollars) for the people of Haiti. 


The rendezvous next Tuesday will be officiated by Massimo Bussac, a Swiss referee who officiated at the 2010 World Cup. More international players should answer present in the next days.

Among the participants appear : Zinédine Zidane (France), Ronaldo (Brazil), Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast), Pedro Pauleta, Fernando Couto, Sá Pinto, Luís Boa Morte et Nuno Gomes (Portugal), Pavel Nedved (Czech Republic), Pierre Van Hooijdonk, Ronald de Boer and Gio Van Bronckhorst (Netherlands), Gheorghe Popescu (Romania), Luciano da Silva, William and Sonny Anderson (Brazil), Raúl Albiol (Spain), Mahmadou Diarra (Mali) and Sabri Lamouchi (France) who will play for the team of the Friends of Ronaldo and Zidane. The current and former players of the Olympiacos will constitute the formation All-Star of the Olympiacos. S.A.

HL/ Didier Drogba