Peace Cup

The Peace Cup is a football (soccer) tournament organized by the Sunmoon Soccer Foundation for Peace, which is connected to Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, which regards the competition between clubs from several continents as a way of world peace promotion and is held every two years in South Korea. In 2006 a women's tournament called the Peace Queen Cup was created, inviting 8 women's national teams from 5 continents.

Tournament Origins

The idea of the Peace Cup came form Rev. Moon's love for soccer and his desire to use the sports to promote world peace. [[1]] Rev. Moon made his first official announcment concerning teh tournament in Seoul, Korea on June 12, 2002 in a speech titled "The Role of Sports in Creating World Peace. [[2]] "The Sun Moon Peace Cup will not only celebrate a healthy spirit of humanity," noted Rev. Moon at the time. "As our spiritual nature continues to develop, it will become a festival of internal and external reconciliation and harmony within the world community. It will be a place where people unite in one mind, as one family, and in one heart, to open the way toward God's ideal of creation, a world of peace, freedom and happiness." Brazilian star Pele was consultanted in the initial planning of the first event, however there was disappointment that he could not help draw a Brazilian team to the inugural event. Pele did attend the final game of the 2003 Peace Cup but later disassociated himself from the tournament.

Format

The competition is played between eight clubs, divided in two groups of four teams each. In the first stage, within their groups the teams play against each other once, and the winner of each group qualifies for the final, which is played in one single match.

Prize money

The prize money of the tournament, in both the 2003 and 2005 editions, is US$2,000,000 for the champion team and US$500,000 to the runner-up.

Venues

All the venues were used in the 2002 World Cup:

• Busan Asiad
• Daejeon Purple Arena
• Gwangju 1985 Stadium
• Seoul World Cup Stadium
• Suwon Bigbird Stadium
• Ulsan Big Crown Stadium

Participating teams

2003 edition

Originally AS Roma (Italy), Bayer Leverkusen (Germany) and São Paulo FC (Brazil) were scheduled to participate, but later withdrew.

Group A

• Besiktas of Turkey
• Ilhwa Chunma of South Korea
• Kaizer Chiefs of South Africa
• Olympique Lyonnais of France

Group B

• 1860 München of Germany
• Nacional of Uruguay
• Los Angeles Galaxy of the United States
• PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands

2005 edition

Group A

• Ilhwa Chunma of South Korea
• Olympique Lyonnais of France
• Once Caldas of Colombia
• PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands

Group B

• Boca Juniors of Argentina
• Real Sociedad of Spain
• Sundowns of South Africa
• Tottenham Hotspur of England

List of champions

Year		Final
		Winner	Score	Runner-Up Titles by team PSV Eindhoven 1 time Tottenham 1 time External links Peace Cup Official Website RSSSF Credits New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here: Peace Cup  history The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia: History of "Peace Cup" Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.