Football |14 September 2021

The opening of the training session yesterday (Photo: Louis Toussaint)

SFF runs training for local elite referees

The Seychelles Football Federation in collaboration with the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, is organising a week-long referees’ training for its elite referees.

The aim of the training is to help the local referees upgrade their knowledge and interpretation of the laws of the game and be certified to referee Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) games. The training, which includes both practical and theoretical sessions, started yesterday at the Maison Football, Roche Caïman and is being run by Fifa’s fitness refereeing coach, Giuseppe Galvana from Italy and Fifa’s technical refereeing coach, Seychellois Jason Damoo.

Only six of SFF’s 14 elite referees were present for the training as four have travelled to Madagascar for Confédération Africaine de Football (Caf) competition duty, while two others are in quarantine.

Referees from Praslin were not able to make it to Mahé due to health restrictions that were in place at the time the list was submitted.

Mr Damoo said other than working on the referees’ fitness condition, they will also be trained and assessed on a new rule change.

He explained that before when the ball accidently touched the hand of an offensive player and his colleague picked the ball and scored, the goal was disallowed as it was considered hand ball. This is not the case anymore, he stated, as a goal scored in such a situation will be considered valid.

The training was launched by SFF vice-chairperson Dolor Ernesta who called on the participants to take advantage of the training and the facilitators’ experience to learn the maximum and help them to stay à jour with new developments in world football.

SFF chief executive Georges Bibi said the SFF requested the training for local referees following changes in the laws of the game. This is because it wants to maintain its list of elite referees for local and international matches.

“The majority of referees represent Seychelles in international competitions run by Caf and Fifa. Therefore, it was important for us to ask Fifa to dispatch an instructor to Seychelles to run the training that will help enhance the capacity of our referees so that they remain at par with what is happening in football worldwide,” said Mr Bibi.

Yesterday’s theoretical session focused on fitness test protocol by Mr Galvana and video sessions on the laws of the game by Mr Damoo. The session ended with a physical test late in the afternoon.

The training will run until September 17, 2021 from 9am to 5pm.

Patrick Joubert