"FIFA Master" 17th Edition: Welcome to Leicester

It has already been six weeks since our class first joined together to study the “FIFA Master” - International MA in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport Programme. Time flies, and there is so much to already tell you as we now know our final project groups, have been to several field visit destinations and have completed our first exam.

The 17th Edition of the course consists of 30 students from 23 different countries and with very different educational and work experience backgrounds. A passion for sport, though, is what definitely unites us as we begin exploring the course together.

The first part of our journey takes place at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture, De Montfort University, in Leicester, UK. This will be our home for studying until Christmas. We have just finished the first submodule: The Birth of Modern Sport and Professional Sport in Context with Professor Martin Polley and have gone through a three hour written examination to test our knowledge. A few weeks of classes with leading academics and sports industry professionals including Simon Inglis, Derek Wilson, Prof. Tony Collins, Prof. Mike Cronin and David Goldblatt have taught us what we needed to know to be able to draw analytical conclusions for this submodule. We have travelled from the ancient world of sport to modernity, and we are all very excited to continue the journey.

We have already experienced the incredible network of the “FIFA Master” with several alumni giving us lectures about their postgraduate professional experience. So far, we have been joined by Adam Crothers on NBA media rights, James Kitching on AFC, Sarah Crumbach and Lena Schoeps on the IOC, and Danis Roberts on Harlequins Rugby Club just to name a few.

As part of our studies we were privileged to have several impressive field visits to very important places in the world of sport that are related to topics we have accessed in class. Those trips have included Wimbledon, Old Trafford Stadium and Manchester United training facilities, Rugby School, Leicester Football Club as well as Leicester Tigers RFC and Manchester City FC. Moreover some of us have also had the opportunity to volunteer for Leicester Tigers and see how the club performs on a match day in real-time.

The visits have provided us with an opportunity to experience in practice how different sporting organisations perform today. We now better understand how they organise their work, what challenges they face and how all operations eventually come together. In addition, we get the opportunity to interact with executives and learn more about their way of operating. 

We all appreciate and cherish the opportunity to be here and look forward to the next steps of the course!

Sebastian Frings and Darya Smirnova

Class Representatives