RIO DE JANEIRO, June 28 -- The sponsorship of Chinese company Yingli Green Energy to the FIFA World Cup helps promote football in the country, FIFA Marketing Director Thierry Weil told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

Weil considers "an honor" that a Chinese company selected FIFA to do a sponsorship. According to him, having a Chinese company as a World Cup sponsor can help make football even more popular in the country, raise awareness and interest about the sport.

"The Chinese population knows about football, about the World Cup, but having a local company being part of the World Cup, looking at the boards and seeing Chinese characters must be something that makes Chinese people extremely proud," he said. "It definitely promotes football."

Yingli was the first Chinese company to sponsor the FIFA World Cup, back in 2010. The company is now sponsoring its second tournament, this time in Brazil, and has supplied the solar energy panels used in the World Cup stadiums, in a move to get the Cup to be more sustainable.

Back when the company was announced as a sponsor, Yingli Green Energy was relatively unknown in the West and even in China itself. Besides, the company had never sponsored an event of this kind before. But that was not a problem, Weil said. According to him, a company's size is not the most important aspect of a sponsorship for FIFA.

"For us, the most important thing is not whether the company is worldwide known or not, but whether they are adding something to the World Cup," he said.

In that case, with FIFA's concerns with sustainability on the rise, the sponsorship of a company which makes solar panels was, in Weil's words, "a perfect match".

Besides that aspect, the fact that a Chinese company had expressed interest in sponsoring the World Cup was itself an important part of the equation. And it helped the company too, Weil said, because having the company's name among worldwide-known brands such as the Cup's other major sponsors raised a lot of interest.

"It was interesting to see people calling us and asking 'who is Yingli'? Everybody knows Coca-Cola, Adidas or McDonald's. And that is what Yingli wanted to achieve, I think: recognition, being known in the world," Weil said.

Weil also commented on the chances of the Chinese football team, who has not qualified to a World Cup since the 2002 edition, held in South Korea and Japan. According to him, it is "only a matter of time" until they qualify for the tournament again.

"I truly believe in China as a team, that they will perform better and get to one of the next World Cups. I hope they will make to 2018," he said, referring to the next Cup, which will take place in Russia.

In addition to more participation of China in the field, FIFA expects other Chinese companies to get interested in the event as well. According to him, so far no Chinese companies contacted FIFA to follow on Yingli Solar's footsteps and become a World Cup sponsor, but that contact usually takes place after the competition ends. For now, he said, they are probably watching to see whether the marketing results are positive.