CAF softens up on club licensing

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has extended by a month the deadline for its member associations to effect club licensing.

Football Association of Malawi (FAM) general secretary Suzgo Nyirenda said the development follows a meeting on club licensing which CAF held in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa on Monday which he attended.

“At first, the deadline was November 31, but later on it was extended by a month to December 31.

“But having understood that the concept is new in Africa, the meeting agreed that associations should still be given time to first of all standardise statutes by including club licensing which will have to be approved by Fifa,” said Nyirenda.

He said FAM already included the club licensing aspect in its new statutes that were approved by Fifa in June this year.

The FAM GS said the next step will be the formation of the first instance committee that will be mandated to licence the clubs after being satisfied that they have met all the requirements.

“If the first instance committee is not satisfied then it will not grant the licence, but in the event that a club feels it has not been fairly treated by the committee then it will take up its case with the appeals committee that will also have to be formed,” said the FAM CEO.

Nyirenda further said although the process of club licensing has started on the local scene, there are still many areas to cover.

“For example we know that notable progress has been made on the issue of player contracts, but we are still behind in other areas such as statutes, ownership, audited accounts, office, club employees such as CEO, marketing manager and youth development policy.

“In Africa as a whole, we are still lagging behind, but the target is that next year we should make tremendous progress in most areas. Otherwise, CAF will come up with another realistic deadline and there will be no second chance as clubs will not be registered,” said Nyirenda.

He described the meeting as beneficial.