Umar pledges to take Sri Lanka football into a digital future | Page 2 | Sunday Observer

Umar pledges to take Sri Lanka football into a digital future

30 May, 2021
Jaswar Umar addressing the media
Jaswar Umar addressing the media

Secretary of the Football Federation of Sri Lanka (FFSL) Jaswar Umar is ready to take up a new challenge and new ideas to uplift football to its glory days while taking the sport into the future.

He made the revelations at a media conference on Tuesday a week before taking on his main opponent Dr Manil Fernando as presidential candidates for the election of the sport’s office bearers to be held on May 31 at the BMICH in Colombo.

Umar is a celebrated sports administrator who rose to the top having gone through many years with the game until he reached the post of Secretary at present. He has identified the abundance of talent available in the country but the game has witnessed a rapid deterioration both locally and internationally. Now he has set a package filled with incentives to restart football designed to transform its standards to high levels.

He said one of his priorities is to make football a tool for the sustainable social development, integrating communities and creating healthy citizens while increasing the competitiveness and economic benefits through a well planned development program and competition.

To go further Umar plans to attract the youth, adults, girls, parents and sponsors to the forefront. He also intends to improve on the investment in infrastructure, clubs, youth academies and competitions while developing the game among the youth, women, coaches and referees.

To achieve greater progress Umar wants to have a clear separation of power between governance, administration and judicial bodies through a new reform process to help bring about accountability and responsibility to all domains.

Umar declared that under his leadership a nationwide online registration system for clubs, players, coaches, referees, administrators, media personnel and all stakeholders will be carried out with the support of the sport’s world governing body FIFA.

An online competition management system will also be set up to keep all match data for consideration for further development.

Umar also pledged that football administration will be in line with the global trend that will be transformed into an e-administration including operations, finances, media, marketing and regional operations while keeping records digitally in a secure environment for the future.

He also said that a project “Football School Sri Lanka” will be the first of its kind in the history of the island’s sports sector that provides a range of sports educational services while the Beddegana Football Complex will be transformed into a fully-equipped Football School with foreign and local experts providing world class football educational services and linked to some of the finest universities in the world with sports curriculums.

“Football in Sri Lanka will be restructured to move forward in a commercially viable manner. Apart from the grants from international bodies, we will initiate a mechanism to increase the revenue through various commercial based activities.

“Sustainable investments on infrastructure and income generation projects will be managed with more private sector participation. More revenue means more investments in football and development.

“A better way of repaying our gratitude to those who served the game is caring for them when they are in need. A well-structured trust fund will be established to assist our past national players, coaches, referees and other listed persons in medical emergencies,” said Umar.

The slogan for his election campaign is “Let’s Rise Again.”

 

Comments