AIFF Media Team

NEW DELHI: Building on the success of the AIFF FAO (Football Association of Odhisha) Referees Academy in Cuttack, All India Football Federation (AIFF) officially launched the AIFF-IFA Referees Academy in association with Indian Football Association (IFA) on Saturday (September 20, 2014).

Present on the occasion at the Vidyasagar Stadium in Barasat was Vice Chairman AIFF Referees Committee Mr. Pradip Nag, Director of Referees, AIFF, Col. Goutam Kar, Instructors Mr. Supriya Bhattacharya and Mr. Udayan Halder.

Milan Dutta, former Member of AFC Referees Committee was the Chief Guest.

The 20 Referees in the Academy will be training two to four days at a time throughout the year under dedicated Referee Instructors. The budding Officials start from category 5 and 4, making it to category 3 during the one-year Academy Programme.

“After the success of the AIFF FAO Academy at Cuttack, this Academy is aimed towards fulfilling the strategic planning of AIFF, wherein we will have two more Academies by end of 2017,” Col. Kar informed www.the-aiff.com.

“Kolkata being the Mecca of football in India, these budding Referees will have excellent on field experience complementing the training they received in the Academy, which will in turn benefit when they come up at the National Level as Cat 2 Referees,” he added.

Mr. Dutta said: “This is a unique concept of training Referees which will benefit for the overall growth of Football in India. I’m sure that days are not far when we will see our Indian Referees in the World Cup.”