AIFF Media Team

NEW DELHI: The All India Football Federation's Referees Committee met over video conferencing on Friday, August 11, 2023.

The meeting was chaired by Mr Sankar Komaleeswaran and was attended by Deputy Chairperson Mr SM Balu, and Committee Members Ms Chaitali Paul, Mr Srikrishna Coimbatore Ramaswamy, Mr Mohd. Kamil, Mr Sethumadhavan Chozhakkad and Mr Subrata Sarkar. AIFF Secretary General Dr Shaji Prabhakaran, Deputy Secretary General Mr Satyanarayan M and Chief Refereeing Officer Mr Trevor Kettle were present at the meeting.

Addressing the meeting, Dr Prabhakaran said, “I'm sure under Mr Sankar's leadership, we will see better days in the refereeing area, and achieve better results in every aspect of refereeing in India. All of our committee members are very experienced and have done great work in their careers, and on behalf of our President and Executive Committee, I would like to say that we are confident you will deliver your absolute best to help improve the standard of refereeing in India.”

Reminding the Committee members of the need to work unitedly for the achievement of Vision 2047 targets, the Secretary General said, “We need to develop the right vision so that refereeing becomes an interesting and encouraging career opportunity. We need more high-quality referees, and also more women referees who can lead by example. There's a lot of work ahead, and we wish the referees committee all the best in achieving our goals and objectives.”

The committee discussed the development of referees at the state level, which would ultimately help more and more quality referees come up at the national level. The initial recruitment and training of referees are key, and with the growing number of high-level competitions resulting in more matches being played across many age groups and categories, having an adequate supply of top-quality referees is the need of the hour, the committee felt.