Sugihara, formerly with the Asian Football Confederation, made a presentation to delegates from the OFC member associations outlining a multi-layered approach to Club Licensing and its implementation in emerging countries.
“To strengthen the league you need to strengthen the bottom club, if the top two clubs in a competition are good, but the bottom club is poor, it raises the question whether it is a good league or not?
“Implementing club licensing, lifts the level of club management and the quality of the bottom club is lifted and increases the quality of the league overall. Fans increase, sponsors increase and from the perspective of the national team, the level is also raised,” Sugihara said.
He also said the FIFA Club Licensing is more than a regulatory matter or another piece of paper, not limited to governance, its a tool for strengthening across a wide area.
“Club Licensing is about regulation and development. But we need to approach Club Licensing from both angles. It is common for clubs not only in Oceania to find this challenging, it is also the same in Asia and in some parts of Europe,” he said.
Sugihara outlined several criteria where Club Licensing raised the bar and had immediate flow-on effects in improving standards in National Leagues.
“If we take sporting criteria we can at how many A License coaches exist in a country. A federation can support clubs by increasing the number of courses to produce more qualified coaches.
“Another criteria is in infrastructure. In some associations there are not many facilities so what should be sought is local government support as well as FIFA.
“But it takes time. Its a mid-term or long-term solution or plan. Short-term, in one country in Asia, not all clubs had have an exclusive home venue as only certain stadiums met that criteria.
“One solution is to define the maximum number of clubs that can share the same venue that meets the critera. Its a compromise but at least its a first step. In a few years, with government support, each club has their own different home venue that meets the criteria. Its a flexible way by defining a short-term solution,” Sugihara said.
Many of the Oceania member associations share much in common with other emerging countries and Sugihara admitted some of the challenges were not straight forward.
“Not all the criteria is easy, you need to categorise, some criteria is difficult to fulfil, maybe you need to hire people, the difficult one is facilities. It takes time. Some criteria like legal it doesn’t require huge cost, it doesn’t take much time, if you have sufficient understanding of the process. The local federation needs to play its part.
“Club Licensing provides a link between National Club Licensing and competitions at Confederation level and encourages the implementation. It’s not only about enforcement but about assistance and incentives,” he said.
The OFC/FIFA Development Seminar on Strengthening National Leagues continues on Saturday 16 November.
Sunday sees the flavour switch to CEO/General Secretary mentoring with Winston Lee of the Singapore FA presenting.
The final two days of the seminar are devoted to Financial Management at Member Association level.

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