The
Secretary General said in his press statement which was issued at the SFF headquarters
here in Mogadishu that the referees are undergoing daily training sessions in
the capital and other regions in the country, as kind of their preparations for
the FIFA course.
"Here
we have fully talented instructors including former international referees Abdi
Abdulle Ahmed and Hassan Mohamed Mahmoud—I am very confident in the knowledge
and experience of the instructors who are capable of coming with referees of
high quality to the FIFA course in Djibouti” SFF secretary general Abdi Qani
Said Arab mentioned in his statement.
He
said that the FIFA refereeing course will gather some 28 elite national and
international level referees from the southern regions and the semiautonomous
states of Somaliland, Puntland and Gal-Mudug in a bid to spread the knowledge
of football across the country.
"Our
course is slated in Djibouti for 3-7 March this year—Somali Football Federation
is weighting on increasing the quality and quantity of soccer referees in the
country and that is why we hold the FIFA level course annually” noted the
secretary General who added that Somali referees also undergo five other local
courses each year. He
praised FIFA for its endless efforts of helping the SFF to promote the progress
of football in a country which was totally ravaged by one of the world’s most
notorious civil wars for over two decades.
Somali Football federation has in the past been
using the neighbouring Djibouti as its home, because of the troubled situation
in Somalia which prevented FIFA to send its instructors. The lack of suitable
facilities was also another key problem since the FIFA instructors need an
international class facility for their fitness trainings during the course.
Somalia’s old facility ‘Stadium Banadir ‘has now been
shaped with an artificial turf this year, but key parts of the stadium still
need to be reconstructed. However Secretary General Abdi Qani Said Arab says he
was very hopeful that next year’s FIFA course for Somalia will be conducted in
Mogadishu if the construction of stadium Banadir ends by April as expected and the
security situations fully develops.
