Friday, August 17, 2012

From Humble Beginnings

Zimbabwe: Fifa Hail Local Refs

FIFA have hailed the development of younger referees in Zimbabwe and believe the country could soon scale the heights it reached at the turn of the millennium when it supplied officials for the World Cup and Confederations Cup tournaments.

The World soccer governing body's instructors - Carlos Henriques and Felix Tangawarima - are in the country for an Elite referees course which began in the capital last Friday and has been running at Prince Edward School.

Another course for the match assessors also ran concurrently with that of the referees but it ended on Sunday night.

Fifa referees development officer Henriques who is no stranger to Zimbabwe having been in the country on a number of occasions on the mission to improve the standards of officiating yesterday expressed satisfaction with the 34-member class of elite referees they have been taking through their paces since Friday. ...

See the whole article here, courtesy of AllAfrica.com.

Kicking Back Comments: I have to say this article gave me great pause. It is one thing to work toward an Olympics or a World Cup within a program like US Soccer which is very well established, very well funded, and very well recognized around the world.

It is quite another to build a program from the ground up having nothing established, little money, and even littler recognition on the world's stage.

Big kudos to these folks whose big dreams, will certainly flourish into big reality in the years to come.

 


No comments:

Post a Comment