September 4 – The Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) has boosted its member development programmes with increased money allocated and new criteria for a raft of development initiatives.
The AFC Financial Assistance Programme (AFAP) has risen to $500,000 in 2019 – an increase of 100% from 2018 – while $800,000 has been released for the period of 2019-2020 for infrastructure investment.
Member Associations (MA) must employ full-time specialists in key areas such as Coach Education, Elite Youth Programmes, Women’s Football, Grassroots, Marketing, Refereeing, Legal Affairs, Media and Communications, Finance, International Relations, and Club Licensing by 2020 in order to access their annual AFAP money.
The AFC’s MA Development Department has also introduced its Core Development Goal 4 (CDG4) which requires MAs to implement a comprehensive financial management system by December 31, 2020, which includes policies, processes, structures and systems, best practice financial reporting and the necessary governance and compliance guidelines and structures.
Alongside this Advance 11 has also been launched to help MAs measure and benchmark their capabilities against a set of guidelines incorporating 11 key functions covering legal and governance, finance and risk, administration, logistics and IT, human resources, facilities management and maintenance.
The guidelines focus on marketing and branding, commercial and business development, stakeholder relations, leadership and management of national teams and competitions. and club management.
The system and methodology of Advance 11 are designed to improve the MAs’ objectives and efficiencies while ultimately helping them to self-evaluate and identify areas, which require attention.
The AFC has also launched two new programmes– the AFC Footballs for Development Scheme and the AFC President’s Technical Staff Initiative.
The AFC Footballs for Development Scheme will distribute 500 Molten training footballs annually to each MA, while the AFC President’s Technical Staff Initiative will provide a financial contribution of $200,000 each year towards the hiring of qualified technical expertise in the areas of technical development for AFAP beneficiary MAs.
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