MUMBAI: The 2018 edition of the FIFA Technical Directors’ workshop kicked off in Mumbai on Tuesday.
Delegates from five member associations namely India, Iran, Oman, Syria and Sri Lanka attended the opening ceremony, which was kicked off by All India Football Federation (AIFF) general secretary Kushal Das. The workshop mainly aims at empowering the technical directors with the knowledge exchanged from the other federations, to help enhance their technical knowledge to help improve coaching licenses and talent systems in their respective countries.
“It’s great that we are having the workshop here. It’s a pilot project that is following up from the 2016 workshops in Dubai and Kochi,” said Das.
“It’s wonderful to get all the technical directors together to share knowledge and exchange ideas.”
Apart from Das, the AIFF was also represented by technical director Savio Medeira, head of administration of the technical department Pushpargha Chattopadhyay and head of player development Richard Hood.
Medeira opined that the role presents a whole set of new challenges, especially with regards to preparing different approaches for a culturally diverse nation like India.
“The focus should always be on football, spread the base, improve the coaches, and in turn improve the players,” felt Medeira.
“As the AIFF technical director you need to keep in mind that there are so many cultures throughout our country — something that may work in one region, may not work in another,” he added.
“So we need to expose our technical directors to what different countries do, in order to develop football.”
Shaji Prabhakaran, who has worked with FIFA as the regional development officer in South Asia, and is currently the head of Football Delhi, opined that this exchange of ideas would help India create their own ‘national football philosophy’.
“This exchange obviously helps because they all have done something successfully in football, and we can all help each other. This exchange of knowledge is especially important for India, as we have a lot to learn from the experts in the other federations,” Prabhakaran said.
“National philosophy is definitely of great importance to Indian football. The technical director needs to be able to initiate the conversation on the ground level, and maybe, through this, we could have our own philosophy a few years down the line,” he concluded.
