Following the Reflection Sessions on Global Football Development held last year by FIFA and the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES), the organisations have published their first joint study on youth football competitions.
The publication looks at how to achieve the comprehensive development of youth players around the world by calling on all stakeholders (local, national, regional and global) to join together to ensure the organisation of youth football competitions on a regular basis.
The study, which is available here, is based on the insightful input of 13 experts from around the world and comprises six case studies from countries such as Mali, Denmark and Venezuela.
Among the conclusions, the experts suggest that a jointly developed standardisation and certification process is one of the many potential avenues to explore when it comes to the proper organisation of youth football competitions.
The Reflection Sessions on Global Football Development aim to bring together at regular intervals multidisciplinary and multicultural groups of contributors with the intention of providing an intellectual, thorough and pragmatic understanding of contemporary and future football development challenges throughout the world.
The sessions pursue six missions:
Delivering pioneering ideas on global football development issues
Identifying current and future challenges
Challenging existing theories and practices
Building multicultural and multidisciplinary knowledge and dialogue
Sharing innovative thinking
Promoting change
Two more studies are currently being planned, based on new sessions, and will be published in 2016 and 2017.