SANTIAGO, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chilean governmental and sports authorities inaugurated on Wednesday in Chile an international soccer tournament for blind people, which will gather representatives from Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.

    The first soccer tournament for blinds "Championship 4 Nations",which will finish on Friday, seeks to promote sports as a mechanism of social inclusion of the disabled people, organizers said.

    The event was inaugurated by Chilean sub-secretary of the Planning Ministry Eduardo Abedrapo, president of the Chilian Federation of Sports for Blinds (Fechider) Miguel Ulloa and head of the National Association of Professional Soccer from Chile (ANFP) Harold Mayne Nicholls.

    Abedrapo said that the disability is not on the people, but in the environment.Ulloa said that "sports is the only mean that allow us to consider us be integrated like citizens of full rightsand obligations."

    "With these examples they give us the option of stop being discriminated," Ulloa said.

    The rules of this sport are similar to those used for the football, despite it has some adaptations that allow players to orientate with their hearing.

    For example the ball has inside steel bells. Each team is formed by four blind players and a non-blind goalkeeper, also a guide behind the rival goal area.

    With exception of the goalkeepers, all the players are eyes' tied up, because some of them can receive a bit of light or guess the position from shadows around them. Enditem