CAMBODIA TO HOST ASEAN FOOTBALL QUALIFIERS

At the Competitions Committee meeting of the Asean Football Federation (AFF) this morning in Bali, reports were received on the current organising capabilities of the two countries concerned.

But following the need of a dateline so as to allow the participating teams better preparation time as well as looking into the marketing needs of the qualifiers, Laos decided that they will not be able to fulfil their obligation due to the SEA Games in 2009.

Laos will be hosts to the biennial South East Asian Games for the first time in 2009 and with the Laotian government already duty bound, there were concern that they might not be able to fulfil the other requirements for Laos to be hosts for the Asean Football Championship qualifiers.

Although Cambodia have won the right to be hosts to the qualifying round of the meet, they will still need to comply with several requirements at the National Olympic Stadium as well as the second venue of the Army Stadium.

However, with the experience of having organised the recent AFF U-17 Championship in Phnom Penh, it is believed that Cambodia are capable of being good hosts.

This provided they fulfil a certain standard in the hotel requirements, the floodlights which has to be of a capacity of 1200 lux, fencing in and around the stadium.

In the meantime, a women’s tournament will be held in Malaysia in early April in preparation for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup while Thailand will hosts the Asean Futsal Championship as planned just before their hosting of the AFC Futsal Championship in Bangkok.

There will also be two youth tournaments organised in preparation for the AFC Under-16 Final and the AFC Under-19 Youth Championship although that will only be announced at a later date.

At the Development Committee meeting afterwards, members have been asked to get more involved with the various courses being offered by FIFA.

There are a total of four modules being offered under the Administration and Management Course of Futuro III.

Module One is Finance Management, Planning and Human Resources while Module Two is Marketing and Communications in Media.

Module Three is Event Management and Competition while Module Four is Club Management.

There are also other courses being offered for Officers and Event Staff as well as those for Referees which include Referee Instructors and Assessors Course, ‘Elite’ Referees, FIFA and Top National Referees and New and Young Referees.