AIFF Media Team

NEW DELHI: The FIFA Pilot Course for Technical Directors, which concluded in Cochin, Kerala, left participants from South and Central Asia plus six participants from India all gaga and euphoric.

The five day FIFA Pilot Course was attended by six Technical Officers from six State Associations as part of FIFA’s Pilot Project, alongwith AIFF’s Technical Director Scott O’Donell.

“Not only we synced ourselves with the modern trends of Football, we refreshed our basic Footballing knowledge and that has helped us evolve into better Technical persons,” said IFA’s Gautam Ghosh, who was one of the participants in the Course.

“It opened new pathways and fed us with new Footballing mentalities. All in all, it was an immense learning experience.”

After a brief pause, Ghosh continued: “I feel nostalgic recollecting the memories as the Course is a once in a lifetime opportunity. And it makes it all the more special, given that it was being held in India.”

“It was a euphoric feeling to relish in such a learning environment and beef up one’s knowledge bank in context to Football.”

“Not only did we learn from the Instructors, but all of the participants shared their respective Footballing knowledge and that added to the learning aura”, Ghosh informed.

“I also learnt how to plan our programs using Project Cycles which was very beneficial for my future work. I want to thank FIFA and AIFF for giving us TO's the chance to attend this Course.”

The informative Course was supervised by FIFA’s Head of Education and Technical Development Juerg Nepfer and was conducted by FIFA Instructors from Switzerland.

AIFF’s Technical Director, Scott O’Donell explained the need of Courses such as the FIFA Technical Director’s Course and said: “It was an extremely beneficial Course for the Technical Directors and Technical Officers.”

“The Course was informative and practical in the sense that it related to the challenges the Technical Director’s faced in their day to day work. FIFA were very happy with the contributions made by our Technical Officers throughout the Course.”

This was the second such Course conducted by FIFA in India, the earlier was conducted in Malawi two weeks back.