Mandla Gagayi, head of sport at Rhodes University Sports Administration recently returned from a Fifa Futuro III course in administration and management, which he attended at the invitation of the South African Football Association.
Mandla Gagayi, head of sport at Rhodes University Sports Administration recently returned from a Fifa Futuro III course in administration and management, which he attended at the invitation of the South African Football Association.
The course, in Vanderbijlpark, Gauteng, from 5 to 10 September, was to “train the trainers” in football administration and management by adopting Fifa's best practice, said Gagayi. In total, 30 candidates were selected for the course from across the country.
Of four from the Eastern Cape, one each came from Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown, East London and Butterworth. Safa selected participants from a pool of applications and made recommendations to Fifa about who to include. Gagayi said they spent a week at River Sun Hotel, on the banks of the Vaal River, receiving instruction from two Fifa International Instructors – Hugo Salcedo, from Los Angeles, and Ashford Mamelodi, from Botswana.
All participants who passed the course, including Gagayi, have been instructed to travel around their province to conduct similar courses for all football structures, so they all can follow the same Fifa model of football development, administration and management.
Those who took part in the Fifa Futuro III course will be continuously assessed by Safa, and Fifa will send instructors to the country in 2013 to assess them further, run a refresher course for successful instructors and then award international accreditation, so these instructors can expand their services to southern Africa.
Various universities around the country were well represented. “Fifa instructors were impressed, because it is their belief that universities should play a central role in the development of football across the world,” Gagayi said.
