By Daniel Itai.
Lubumbashi, DRC. (News of The South) – Yesterday FIFA president Gianni Infantino visited the site of Congolese club TP Mazembe’s new football stadium, which will be able to hold 50 000 fans, and the club’s youth academy.
The FIFA president said FIFA was planning on supporting and developing football in the DRC and Africa. He spoke about three specific pillars, refereeing, infrastructure and competitions.
“What I want, what FIFA wants and what football needs is to see African football shine. We want to bring it to the highest of heights and show the world the outstanding talent and amazingly gifted players your continent possesses.
To do this, we want to implement a three pillar approach, refereeing, infrastructure and competitions. In close cooperation with CAF, the 54 member associations across Africa and other stakeholders.
I am positive that we will make African football reach the top level where it should be because the quality and potential are definitely here,” said Infantino.
The first pillar, refereeing, will create a professional and elite group of African referees who will be independent of administrative and political bodies.
This follows on from CAF’s last Executive Committee meeting at which a decision to implement reforms in the refereeing sector was approved.
The second pillar, infrastructure, will see FIFA mobilise companies and entrepreneurs to gather around US$1 billion with the objective of building at least one stadium that complies with FIFA’s standards in each African country.
The third pillar, competitions, focuses on developing new and better competitions to generate more revenues so that the African clubs can retain talented players.
Infantino also mentioned the possibility of creating an African League that would see the best clubs from the continent play against each other and the organisation of regional competitions and youth tournaments to further help the development of young players in Africa.
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