By: Mohamed Abu Conteh
The Sierra Leone Football Association in Partnership with UEFA Assist has kick-off a five-day workshop on League development for Football officials at the Atlantic Lumley Hotel in Freetown.
The program, which is one of the two transformative UEFA Assist projects, recently secured by the Sierra Leone Football Association targets club owners and Management staff of the federation with a specific focus on developing the Sierra Leone Premier League.
In his statement, Kenny McLeod UEFA Marketing and Commercial Consultant said there has been a great collaboration between UEFA and Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA), noting that we’re on invitation from SLFA to come and teach on Professionalization as the Sierra Leone Football has plans to help build on administrative functions.
He noted that the Club Officials in the training are going to learn Good Governance, Communications, Finance Management, Match day Operational, and other areas of importance.
He sends thanks to the Sierra Leone Football Association SLFA for the invitation for them to come on board and assist.
Chris Kamara the Scribe of the Sierra Leone Football Association said as a member Federation of CAF and FIFA, the Football Federation’s approach to UEFA is one of the five good Confederations in the World that is heading European Football and one of the leading Confederations among the five Confederations in World.
He affirmed that they have their leadership Management Programmes and Football Development Projects where they always help develop emerging Countries so that those countries can come to speed with Football Governance, Football excellence, and Football Development.
“We give those Countries to help players that are playing in their domestic League will have that quality even at their Market at the end product”, he explained.
He added that their own confederation started to roll out knowledge-sharing with member Associations, where Sierra Leone has to apply for the leadership program which they successfully held in 2020 under Madam Isha the then Sierra Leone Football Association President and now FIFA council member.
He stated that as the scribe applied for two more projects and luckily the Football Federation won two of those projects, namely the lead development projects is currently ongoing, and the women’s development program that is going to take place which is going to purely develop Women’s Football in the Country.
He furthered that, the two consultants from UEFA namely, Stuart Larman, who has more than 20 years wealth of experience in Football and Governance across the globe are here to help Football Federation and the use the same model to generate revenue.
“After they have studied the Football dynamics in Sierra Leone, they made it clear that it is not the responsibility of the Football Federation to sponsor the elite League, but the clubs need to be financially viable by themselves they should have money to participate in the Premier League”, adding that they said if the club want autonomy there the challenged starts.
Chris Kamara said at the end of the five days of the Workshop the club, Officials will be able to learn Good Governance, having a sound Football Strategy, having a sound Cooperate Strategy, having a Vision mission, and how to convert those strategies into goals base on their objectivity with their clubs.
All the 18 premier League club representatives are presently taking the five days workshops.
In another development, the Sierra Leone Football Association President Thomas Daddy Brima is currently in France on FIFA President Infantino’s invitation as top football administrators across the world converge in Paris to crown this year’s bests at the FIFA Football Awards.
President Brima is also using the chance to engage Infantino on several issues pertinent to the development of football in Sierra Leone.
