Forty par­tic­i­pants from lo­cal and re­gion­al as­so­ci­a­tions and clubs have joined in a four-day FI­FA Mem­bers As­so­ci­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tive and Man­age­ment Course, which opened at the VIP Lounge of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Lee opened the event, which is be­ing con­duct­ed by Fi­fa in­struc­tor Patrick Beck­les.

"This is tru­ly a his­toric oc­ca­sion for us in T&T be­cause while we have had cours­es in the past, those al­ways in­volved par­tic­i­pants from the re­gion but this one is geared specif­i­cal­ly to­wards mem­bers of the T&T foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty. We iden­ti­fied the course and Fi­fa ap­proved it and now we ex­pect it will go a long way in im­prov­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment of the game in lo­cal foot­ball," Tim Kee said.

The TTFA's de­sired ob­jec­tive for this course is "to de­vel­op a cadre of foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tors who can both man­age and de­vel­op the re­sources re­quired to achieve sub­stan­tial foot­ball pro­grammes."

Through­out the course, the par­tic­i­pants will be chal­lenged to adopt and adapt best prac­tice prin­ci­ples and ex­ist­ing, suc­cess­ful foot­ball pro­grammes to their lo­cal sit­u­a­tion. Dis­cus­sion will be en­cour­aged, ex­change of ideas and rel­e­vance to lo­cal sit­u­a­tion ex­plored.

Case Stud­ies will be used through­out to in­tro­duce, high­light and re­in­force the key con­cepts be­ing pre­sent­ed. They will be re­ferred to as teach­ing mo­ments dur­ing the var­i­ous ses­sions and as many prac­ti­cal group ses­sions will be in­cor­po­rat­ed to en­able ex­am­i­na­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the best prac­tice prin­ci­ples.

The cours­es were of­fered by Fi­fa. The world gov­ern­ing body has sought to as­sist the lo­cal body and this all falls with­in the TTFA's com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of the game in T&T.