LISBON: A song by Grammy-winning Canadian pop singer Nelly Furtado is to be the official anthem of the three-week Euro 2004 football tournament, organisers said. “I am very excited, I wrote the song ‘Forca’ especially for the tournament. It is about the love of the game,” the singer said in a videotaped message broadcast on April 5 at a news conference in Portugal, the country of origin of her parents and the venue for the championship’s final.

Furtado will perform the upbeat song, whose title means “strength” in Portuguese, before the start of the final match of the 16-nation tournament on July 4 in Oporto, Portugal’s second-largest city.

The song, whose chorus is performed in Portuguese, is the sixth track on the 25-year-old singer’s second album ‘Folklore’ which has sold over a million copies around the world since its release in November.She won a Grammy in 2002 for her catchy first single “I’m Like a Bird”, off her hugely successful debut album ‘Whoa, Nelly’, which has sold over six-million discs around the world since its release in 2000. — AFP