SOME OF THE CAF REQUIREMENTS:
MBABANE – Implementation of the latest CAF Club Licensing standards in the country will take football one step forward.
This is more so because professionalism has been sung for too long with implementation proving very slow towards that. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) Club Licensing standards appeared conspicuously compromised by football authorities and the elite clubs. Some clubs had remained elite even when CAF stated categorically clear they deserved to be relegated to lower leagues, suspended or fined yet they failed to even register junior teams under the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE).
Some of the CAF Club Licensing requirements include setting up junior structures; Under-15s and Under-17s, having qualified personnel for senior and junior teams while having fully equipped
Lease agreements for training grounds, match venues.
Proof of ownership if stadiums owned. Audited financial statements.
Junior structures for Under-15s and
offices with a full-time secretary and/or chief executive officer (CEO), among the main requirements which of course include the challenging financial statements that show a healthy budget to run the club, even if it qualified for CAF interclub competitions like the TOTALEnergies CAF Champions League and TOTALEnergies CAF Confederation Cup.
Requirements
It is a requirement as indicated in correspondences sent to the PLE by the EFA which clubs also received last month and even attended workshops on the subject, that each one provides lease agreement for their training grounds which must have ablutions as well as same for match venues.
They are as well required to provide medical certificates for players or registration of the player cannot go ahead. Just early this year, CAF dropped a bombshell which took most African teams by surprise. ers’ Re17s boys with qualified technical, medical staff.
Fully equipped offices with personnel like permanent secretary, email, and internet.
It was said elite women teams and sound development structure would soon be a requirement to play in the inter-club tournaments. CAF had wanted it working as of the upcoming CAF Champions League and Confederation Cup 2022/23, where Eswatini is represented by Royal Leopard and Mbabane Highlanders respectively.
CAF suspended the women football requirement to allow teams to establish the structures, but it is anticipated that next season all elite teams should have women football teams to qualify for registration even with the EFA. This is also about the financial muscle of the elite teams which CAF wants to be guaranteed, as opposed to the prevailing situation in the country where teams have repeatedly failed to pay players and also used ‘made up’ figures in contracts to have players registered yet not a cent being received as salary.