Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Male: A Club Licensing Workshop for all Maldives Premier League and second division clubs was organised under the AFC League Development Programme on Thursday.
The workshop aimed to ensure the implementation of the AFC Cup Club Licensing Regulations by 2018 and implementation of the Football Association of Maldives (FAM) National Club Licensing Regulations by 2017.
The Workshop was attended by 18 clubs – eight from the Premier League and 10 clubs from the second division.
A presentation on the AFC Development Programme was conducted before the Club Licensing Workshop.
AFC Development Officer Yogesh Desai presented on the objectives, timelines, process and criteria within the Club Licensing Regulations framework as currently, the FAM does have some regulations for the clubs to participate in the premier league.
The regulations are at a slightly lower level than that of the AFC Cup Club Licensing Regulations and although their regulations are not structured, the AFC regulations will become a base for them to properly structure theirs. The FAM aims to implement the regulations at the national level from the 2017 season.
The only issue the FAM faces pertaining to the Club Licensing Regulations is that they cannot manage their youth teams as they severely lack infrastructure facilities for training, as do some of the clubs’ senior teams.
To overcome this, the FAM and clubs are thinking about working with schools and finding out a mechanism to adopt their teams as their youth teams.
The FAM is also working on expanding the league to the outlying islands and bring them to the fore at the national level as their clubs are quite competitive but lack financial strengths.
Going forward, a Club Development Workshop has been planned to be held in the future as the next step of action under their AFC League Development Programme participation.