VISION MALDIVES and Refereeing

19 February 2009 - Vision Maldives is launched by Ali Azim, the President of Football Association of Maldives. A seven member team from AFC Vision Asia paid an assessment visit to gather information and to have a clear understanding of the football dynamics in Maldives. AFC Vision Asia Director, Brendon Menton disclosed that this initial visit is to look into the level of administration and management of the football association and its competitions, technical and coaching, refereeing, grassroots development and the clubs.
What implications will this entry into Vision Maldives have on refereeing? FAM is committed in developing the refereeing element in football. Ali Azim has taken the pro-active action of employing a Referees Director to ensure that the development and management of refereeing is going the right direction. Programs have already been planned to have courses in the atolls to recruit new referees, identifying potential good referees to be given further training and grooming into better referees. Atolls that need courses for basic referees and FUTSAL referees can contact the department via email amirsw@yahoo.com. Existing referees will be given the guidance and a clear career path to enable themselves to be motivated to improve towards a higher level of refereeing standard. When there are enough referees in the islands and atolls, the Island Tournament held every year will find better standard referees handling the matches. Specialization of task as referees and assistant referees will later on be introduced. All FUTSAL tournament will be closely scrutinized to raise the level of competitions and this initiative will eventually create good future FIFA FUTSAL Referees. FIFA Beach Soccer Referees will later be the target of Vision Maldives.
Having easier said than done, it’s easy “to take the horse to the river but we can’t force the horse to drink from the river”. The referees need to have the aspiration and desire to excel. Referees need to undergo paradigm shift, change of attitude, self-motivation to do the best and self-evaluation if we want to see the vision of having a Maldivian referee in the World Cup becoming a reality. “Spoon-feeding attitude, complacency and blaming others for their own failure” should not be a culture to follow anymore.