AIFF Media Team

NEW DELHI: The All India Football Federation organised an online FIFA MA course for Referee Assessors from Tuesday (July 14, 2020) to Thursday (July 16, 2020). 48 officials, including three women Referee Assessors, attended the course. Mr. Farkhad Abdullaev from Uzbekistan was appointed as the course instructor for the same. New amendments in the laws of the game, handball interpretations, penalty area incidents and football understandings of the referees were stressed upon during the three-day course.

"Usually, we spend more time on handball situations during a course — because handball situations need to be discussed and understood properly. There were new amendments in the laws of the game this year. They were to be explained in details as well," Abdullaev stressed.

The Uzbek instructor was Technical Instructor in four FIFA World Cups including Russia 2018 as well as two editions of the AFC Asian Cup. 

Further, he lauded the 'solidarity' amongst the Indian referee assessors while assessing their performances during the course.

"Overall, all of them possess a good understanding of the laws of the game and practical refereeing, but there are always some areas which need to be clarified. I can see they have good solidarity and always try to help each other. I observed it during group discussions."

He suggested organising a live session with Referees and Assessors together to "minimise the gap".

"A discussion between Assessors and Referees is beneficial as it will minimise the gap of different understanding in some critical situations. Next time, I would prefer to have referees and assessors in the same classroom for live courses. It will help to build a better understanding amongst them."

The 48 referee assessors who attended the course are as follows: Abdul Hanif Khan, Abdul Saleem, Adley Costa, Ajit Dutta, Ajjagowdar Arjunan, Anamika Sen, Anthony John D'Costa, Balasubramanium B, Basker, Bentla Dcoth, Bikramjit Purkayastha, CM Ramesh Babu, Chamchuk Lama, Chittaranjan Singha, Dinesh Nair, Egidio D' Costa, Elangovan T, Francisco Fernandes, Goculdas Nagvenkar, I Rabichandra Singh, M Joychandra Singh, Maria P Rebello, Mohd. Kamil, Mrinal Kanti Roy, Naveen Jaideep Sundi, Nazir Ahmed, P.S. Sasikumar, Pijush Biswas, Raghunath Tilu Gosavi, Rajesh Kumar, Ranadhir Sow, Rizwan Ul Haq, Roopak Kumar Mukherjee, Shaji C Kurian, Subrata Das, Sunanda Kumar Bose, Supriya Bhattacharyya, Suresh Srinivasan, Sushant Chandra Mohanty, T Pradeep Kumar, Tusher Kanti Guha, Vikram Singh Bhandari, Walter Pereira, Murthy G, Dhanraj More, Andrew Sekhar D, Bharat Singh Negi, and Vishnu Chauhan.