In Search Of Meeting FIFA, CAF Requirements For Professional Club Football

In Search Of Meeting FIFA, CAF Requirements For Professional Club Football

Prof. Shadad with the panel’s members

KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - Chairman of the Sudan Football Association (SFA) Kamal Shaddad has considered his Association’s panel assigned to work for converting the Sudanese premier league clubs into professional entities "an important body for the future of Sudanese football."

Shaddad said his Association will, in the coming stage, see an intensive movement at all football levels particularly with respect to the bid to turn the premier league clubs into professional bodies in coping with the FIFA and Confederation of African Football (CAF) regulations. 

Shaddad has expressed satisfaction over what the panel had done so far to convince premier league clubs to gradually move towards professionalism.

For a club to become professional the FIFA and, consequently the CAF, have set certain criteria that can be broad lined in: 

  • Promote and continuously improve standards across all areas of football.
  • Ensure that clubs have an adequate level of management and organization.
  • Adapt clubs' sporting infrastructure to provide players, spectators and media representatives with suitable, well-equipped and safe facilities.
  • Protect the integrity and the smooth running of regional club competitions. 

These regulations can be detailed in:

- Each member club stadium should have numbered, high quality seats.

- The stadium should have a car garage that can accommodate 5000 vehicles.

- Each stadium should have a hospital at close distance (within a half hour driving distance).

- An airport at a distance of 180 KLM or less.

- The stadium should be lit with electricity.

- The stadium should have an ambulance as well as a room to check for doping.

- The stadium’s pitch should conform with international specifications and should provide facilities for the press as well as places for fans with disabilities.

- Each club should hold a general assembly and an elected board.

- Each club should be a company whose shares are sold to the public, who share the profits at the end of the season.

- All players, administrators and referees should work on professional basis, bound by official contracts. 

The SFA panel has already toured the country’s regions to explain the FIFA and CAF regulations and requirements to the concerned clubs.

Prof. Shaddad said they were “quite satisfied with what the panel had done so far in convincing the premier league clubs to gradually turn to professionalism in keeping with the FIFA and CAF requirements.” 

The panel said, since its formation in April 2018, it had visited 15 out of 18 clubs to explain the FIFA and CAF requirements and to urge the respective clubs to conform. 

Panel Chairman Ezz Eddin Alhaj said had presented a report on their tours to the SFA Chairman, Professor Shaddad who asked them to go ahead. 

Alhaj said Chairman Shaddad and the Association’s Legal Committee Chairman, Prof. Mohammad Jalal, had asked them to keep up with their mission. 

To this effect a workshop will be organized during 30-31 August to be attended by board members of the premier league clubs and concerned bodies, according to Alhaj. 

He said international experts will participate in the workshop, to be sponsored by the Saudi Sports Sciences Academy. 

The workshop will review the practical experiments of a number of Asian and African football federations in the bid towards professional football and the impediments that face this endeavor. 

The panel’s meeting with the SFA leaders had also approved a time frame for obtaining the professional club license from the SFA, said Alhaj. “The meeting was successful and fruitful in which panel members presented their experiments and the efforts they exerted to accomplish their assignment,” said Alhaj, the panel chairman. 

He extolled the welcome and cooperation they received from the respective clubs they visited.

He said they had emphasized to the clubs the need to care for young football teams and strive to legalize their finance by filling the forms presented to them at the right time. “This will help the panel resolve problems at the right time,” said Alhaj. 

Now the question: Are the premier league clubs able to turn gradually towards the aspired professionalism which is sure to lead to the renaissance of Sudanese football?

 

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YH/AS

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