Football Executive Programme launched at the CONMEBOL headquarters in Paraguay

The CIES is pleased to announce its cooperation with FIFA and CONMEBOL in launching the first-ever edition of the Football Executive Programme, at the CONMEBOL headquarters in Asunción, Paraguay, on 17 September 2018.

The principal objective of the programme is to provide, harmonise and broaden football knowledge with the aim of offering enhanced, multi-disciplinary and comprehensive training to General Secretaries and key administrative staff working for member associations in South America.

As the President of CONMEBOL, Alejandro Dominguez notes, it is about learning from the past to consolidate the future. For CONMEBOL, “The main objective is to promote football in South America in a spirit of peace, understanding and fair play, promoting development through more training, better infrastructure, adequate organization and quality in CONMEBOL tournaments and competitions. Furthermore, it is to provide economic, technical and human support to Member Associations aimed at developing football as a whole, and throughout South America.”

Jair Bertoni, FIFA’s Director of Member Associations for the Americas, and CIES FIFA Master 5th edition graduate, added, “Football is constantly evolving, presenting such huge sporting, commercial, social and technological challenges that associations nowadays require greater management knowledge and professionalism to equip their structures with efficient capabilities so that they can tackle these head on. This is why FIFA, in conjunction with CONMEBOL and the CIES, has backed this programme.”

The CIES is very optimistic about the freshly launched Football Executive Programme and believes that as a result, this will not only professionalize the ten FIFA member associations represented in South America, but will also contribute to the strengthening and the establishment of various collaborations between worldwide football-institutions.

Since its foundation in 1995, the role of CIES has been to spread education and knowledge in the world of sports and with the Football Executive Programme it will have the opportunity to focus on the development of administrators and managers of football with the long-term vision of transforming operations more efficienty.

The new programme is one year in length and is delivered by internationally renowned professionals. It consists of seven modules and focuses on various aspects of football management, including strategy, governance, law, communication, marketing, audio-visual rights and development.