The Fédération Internationale De Football Association (FIFA) on Thursday, March 16, unveiled its strategic development plan for football around the world where it is planning to establish at least one academy in every country around the world. Prof Arsène Wenger, FIFA's chief of global football development, said that it is a great opportunity for young people around the world to play football. “With development of the talent scheme, we will establish an academy in every country as we have analyzed that there’s a better way of giving chance to everybody around the world which can help to give more chances to the young talented boys and girls,” Wenger said during the 73rd FIFA Congress at BK Arena. The world body pledged to establish at least one football academy in every country by 2026. There will also be an annual FIFA U-17 World Cup for girls and boys. ALSO READ: Rwanda welcomes FIFA Football for Schools Program Wenger said FIFA will allocate $200 million to the FIFA Forward program to ensure that young talents across the globe are given a chance to shine. “The talent development programme is to ensure that every talent gets a chance. That goal is very ambitious and we are highly motivated and focused. It’s a huge chance,” said Wenger. Wenger launched the ground-breaking talent development initiative which will reach every country around the world and enable member associations to optimize their technical structures. Through FIFA’s new talent development programme, from this year, all 211 member associations will be entitled to benefit from a FIFA assessment of various areas of their high-performance ecosystem in both men’s and women’s football, including all national teams, domestic leagues, scouting projects, and academics. ALSO READ: FIFA Congress: Keep bad politics out of sports – Kagame Following the assessment performed by FIFA’s experts, a report will be produced for each of the member associations involved, thus benchmarking their technical ecosystem against global standards. Based on the reports, FIFA will implement tailor-made technical programs in cooperation with the member associations.
