The CEO of Buruj FC, Dr. Buruj Waheed Salaudeen, has hinted that the new innovation, FIFA Connect, which was introduced by the football governing body, will be of huge benefit to club owners and players.
It will be recalled that in the recent correspondence received from the Nigeria Football Federation, the football body threw light on new innovation of a centralized platform tagged “FIFA CONNECT”.
The FIFA Connect Programme is poised to assist member associations (MAs) in registering all their stakeholders in a systematic way and keep track of players, coaches and referees – wherever they are in the world.
The Connect Programme generates a unique FIFA ID code for every individual, who has a role in the football organisation. This code is like a digital football passport number and has the information of the history of each stakeholder.
With FIFA Connect, European clubs can easily contact any Nigeria club if they want to communicate directly with the club. And the confusion and disagreement in ownership of players will be put to rest.
It also renders support for the development of MAs by defining a strategic plan for registration and IT, based on their current level of technological maturity. It aids standardisation of data and processes and having one football ecosystem for data, thus allowing the easy integration and exchange of data from different sources.
Speaking on the importance of the new Innovation, Buruj CEO, Dr. Salaudeen Waheed, said “I give kudos to the Nigerian Government and most pertinently the Nigeria Football regulating bodies (NFF and LSFA), for their stride to ensure that a formidable structure is put in place for football to grow vast in Nigeria”.
It is no news that Buruj Sports Academy, an affiliate of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), had been widely known to align with strict compliance and consistency in adhering to Government rules and regulations as demonstrated recently by filing of all our returns as and when due to the appropriate authority (FIRS and LIRS).
“The FIFA Connect is a give back to every stakeholder in football and a veritable ground to correct the impression that Football is just a hobby rather, it is a major business. With the Centralized systems now it is easier for us to track progress of our players and also know the background of every player that approaches us as the NFF qualify to use the FIFA clearing house to track-down all monies paid and transfers being made on each player as contained in the International Transfer Matching System (ITMS)”, Dr. Salaudeen concluded.