Football: Seychelles/Fifa   SFF president Chetty pleads case for small nation teams |21 October 2022

Mr Chetty and PS Jean-Louis with Mr Infantino (centre)

Teams from small nations need more attention and assistance from football’s governing body if the game is to progress in those countries.

This was one of the points made by the president of the Seychelles Football Federation (SFF), Elvis Chetty, to the head of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) Gianni Infantino when they met in Doha, Qatar recently.

Mr Chetty was accompanied at the meeting by principal secretary for youth and sports Ralph Jean-Louis.

The SFF president said Mr Infantino welcomed the initiative taken by Seychelles to establish cooperation programmes with other small nations such as the recent one with San Marino which resulted in a meeting between the men’s senior national teams of the two nations.

The game, played in San Marino, ended in a goalless draw.

Mr Chetty said he hoped such exchanges would be formalised in future within the structure of Fifa assistance programmes either on a bilateral basis or in the form of competition for both women’s and men’s teams. This will allow teams from small nations to play more frequently and express themselves against opponents of around the same level.

By doing so, they will be in a better position to monitor and assess their progress, something not necessarily easy against bigger nations.

Mr Chetty briefed Mr Infantino about the SFF’s ambitious youth and women development programmes, in particular the Institute of Football Seychelles (IFS).

The SFF president said they also spoke about the need for Fifa to continue and step up, where possible, assistance given to small nations to develop their infrastructure, financial and administrative support.

It must be noted that the SFF has already submitted a project to seek assistance from Fifa to partly assist government with the renovation of Stad Linite to allow it to be certified for international games.

Another important area of discussion was the need to allow, where practicable, small nations to host Fifa events in areas such as beach football and futsal. The hosting of such events would act as a tonic for the development of football among the youth in those countries.

Towards this end, Seychelles has made a bid to host the Fifa Beach Soccer World Cup after successfully hosting the Cosafa and African Championship.

Mr Chetty is confident that Seychelles will be chosen as hosts of one of the future Fifa Beach Soccer World Cups.

Contributed