FIFA President and General Secretary Meeting for 18th Edition FIFA Master Class

Each year, the FIFA Master class has the opportunity to visit the Home of FIFA in Zurich for what is one of the most important field visits of the academic year. Indeed, this is a key moment in the life of each edition, as it allows students to attend various talks from senior personnel at one of the most important international sporting federations in the world.

For the current 18th edition FIFA Master class, Friday 6th April 2018 is a date they will remember for a very long time as they had the immense pleasure and honour to be welcomed by both FIFA President Gianni Infantino and General Secretary Fatma Samoura.

The FIFA Master course, which was first launched in 2000, is now firmly established as one of the world’s leading sport management courses and is the only course to have been ranked No.1 in Europe on five separate occasions - 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017 by SportBusiness International. This strong reputation is thanks to a wide and stimulating mix of both theoretical teaching and practical case studies. Our postgraduate programme offers a large number of field visits throughout the three modules in Leicester, Milano and Neuchâtel to prestigious sporting organisations such as the FIFA, IOC, UEFA, FEI, All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, Manchester City FC, Leicester City FC, Manchester United FC and FC Internazionale Milano. This allows for a unique industry-based learning process which has proved to be highly effective, especially in terms of professional skills development. The yearly visit to FIFA perfectly embodies this innovative approach.

As part of the intensive day of talks and activities at FIFA headquarters, Mr Infantino also awarded the FIFA/CIES International University Network Prize to the Executive Sports Management programme’s winning student group for their outstanding project work last year.   

Later, the field visit ended with a mixed football match between FIFA staff (with a team mainly comprised of Alumni now working at FIFA) and members of the 18th edition FIFA Master class.  The match was then followed by a joint evening dinner.

The International Centre for Sport Studies (CIES) and the course organisers would like to warmly thank FIFA for making the 18th edition class so welcome and for making the visit such a memorable day.

The International MA in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport - the FIFA Master is organized by the CIES in partnership with De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), SDA Bocconi School of Management (Milan, Italy) and the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland).