ESF Secretary General, Ami Baran, was invited by FIFA and the International Centre for Sports Studies to their reflection session on football development. The aim of the session was to bring in a group of expert contributors with the intention of providing an intellectual, thorough and pragmatic understanding of contemporary development challenges throughout the world.

Ami presented, in a number of issues, the softball side of development and strategic planning, using also the work of the new WBSC SD strategic plan. Twelve people from around the world gathered for the two-day session including social economic researchers, board member of the European professional football leagues, FIFA senior development manager Mike Pfister, FIFA regional development officer Shaji Prabhakaran (in the cover photo), Brazilian Football Confederation technical development coordinator Fernando Belotti, and others.

"It was an honor to be invited by FIFA to this session and in general, I was happy to share many of our ideas and concepts which were taken very seriously by FIFA. They showed a lot of interest in governance and development issues and have requested more follow up discussions" said Ami Baran.

-Helena Novotná-