Media Release

Fédération Internationale de Football Association

FIFA Strasse 20, P.O Box 8044 Zurich, Switzerland, +41 (0) 43 222 7777

Friday 21 December 2018, 14:33

A wind of digital change blows through Concacaf Member Associations

  • Workshop presenting FIFA Connect took place in Panama from 11-12 December

  • 11 Member Associations from Concacaf attended the workshop

  • Aim is to use technology to significantly improve football development in the region

From 11 to 12 December representatives of FIFA and the FIFA Connect team presented the digital platform to a range of selected Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf) Spanish-speaking Member Association (MA) representatives who will be using the new system to register their football stakeholders in the future.

Representatives from the Canadian and Belize Member Associations were also attending the training to learn how to use the new innovative tool.

Martin Sam, the project manager leading the development of the platform, was delivering the workshop along with his colleagues from the FIFA regional office in Panama. He expressed how he firmly believes that new technologies can significantly improve football development and bring more efficient use of digital data in the region.

"As part of the Member Associations division at FIFA, our role is to develop football on and off the pitch," Sam said. "By using FIFA Connect, our MAs can start registering their football stakeholders including players, coaches, referees and officials and access this data through their mobile phones. We at FIFA are strong believers that face-to-face, human interaction is very important, that’s why this workshop is also about knowledge sharing and knowing from each other."

The Costa Rican MA was one of the first ones to use the FIFA Connect platform in the Concacaf region. Alberto Sanchez Espinoza, who is coordinating the digital platform in the federation, highlighted how useful it has been so far.

"Thanks to the platform, we were able to register all of the football players currently active in our affiliated leagues."

Members of Panamanian Football Federation also expressed their satisfaction: "We have been migrating our data into the new FIFA Connect platform within the past year," said Silvia Angel, Head of Statistics and Registration at the federation. "Thanks to its functionalities, we will be able to update everything, including professional players' and amateurs' registrations. We hope we can start introducing the new platform starting from January 2019 onwards."