Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Kuala Lumpur: Ten young referees groomed by the AFC in its Project Future Referees programme have become FIFA International Referees for 2011 proving that the project is effective in producing top referees not only in Asia but also the world.
AFC Referees Director Yoshimi Ogawa has told the-afc.com that the 10 are out of 57 total members in the Project Future Batches 2007, 2008 and 2009.
“This means 18.5 percent of the members of the three batches have gone on to become FIFA Referees. I would say this is a high percentage of conversion success for our Project Future programme,” he said.
Project Future is a long-term development programme for refereeing as well as coaching initiated by the AFC as an integral part of the vision to develop football throughout Asia.
Young referees from around the continent will be groomed by the AFC for about two years under the programme that aims to produce top referees in Asia and also the world.
The new FIFA Referees from the 2007 Batch are Wang Di (CHN), Zhang Lei (CHN), Oki Dwi Putra Senjaya (IDN), Mohamad Qasim Iessa Saray (IRQ), Sudish Kumar Pandey (NEP), women’s referee Abirami Apbai Naidu (SIN), Porached Wongkamdee (THA) and women’s referee Edita Mirabidova (UZB).
Faizullin Timur (KGZ) from Batch 2008 and Khamis Mohammed Al Marri (QAT) from the 2009 Batch complete the list of 10.
Ogawa believes that more Project Future Referees will have the opportunity to blow the whistle internationally.
“We have confidence that the other Project Future Referees, including those from the latest batch, Batch 2010, will work hard and also get the FIFA feather on their cap, based on the results of the previous batches.
“However, we do hope that all the Project Future members will go on and ‘score’ in FIFA-sanctioned matches, hopefully as soon as two years after they graduate from the Project Future programme,” he said, adding that two of the 10 referees are also members of the AFC Referees Development Group which was formed the beginning of this year.
Batches 2008 and 2009 have graduated while Batch 2009 will do so towards the end of this year. Batch 2010 started their programme in November last year.