Guyana Football Federation Referee Coordinator Winston Manjet, praised the decision of CONCACAF via its Refereeing Department, to launch the CONCACAF Center of Refereeing Excellence (CCRC), building on its initial Programme of Referee Excellence (PORE) initiative.
This was disclosed following an exclusive interview with Stabroek Sport yesterday. According to Manjet, “This is an excellent program and an excellent initiative and we have to send people on it and utilize it. It is very good, the referees who are not earmarked must pass through this program before enter the FIFA list. They would never get onto the FIFA list going forward if they don’t go through this program.”
He further said, “We have use it, at the moment we are behind with our training and we will have to start some rigid programs to get back into tune when this situation is over. We have some young referees with talent but all our programs and everything we had planned fell apart because of this Covid-19 virus.”
His sentiments were echoed by former FIFA Referee Otis James who said, “I would congratulate Brian Hall and the entire CONCACAF Team, it’s a very good educational program for the referees especially the Caribbean. The reason why I said so, is because it will bridge the gap between the Caribbean and the rest of CONCACAF, if this was in the early days it would have been much better for the Caribbean referees.”
He further said, “At the moment you don’t have to go anywhere to do a course, everything now is right in front of you. It’s far better now to be a referee operating in the region and the way it is broke down its highly unlikely that you will not succeed.”
The regional confederation on April 15th announced the launch of the CCRC, which is headed by Brian Hall, CONCACAF Director of Refereeing, who is also the head of the PORE initiative.
According to CONCACAF’s, “The CCRE will provide referee education for all FIFA Referees, Instructors and Assessors from CONCACAF’s 41 Member Associations via an online portal and will include various features including video quizzes, discussions boards and presentations from courses and programs.”
Key features of the program include analyzing video clips, as well as discussion forums for various refereeing groups within CONCACAF.
“The roll-out of the CCRE will occur in phases with Concacaf’s top referees receiving priority access to the portal until eventually all of the referees, instructors and assessors throughout the 41 MAs have access. Once the roll-out is complete, those referees will have access to the kind of information that was previously only readily available by attending courses or programs on-site”, CONCACAF further disclosed.
The CCRC will complement PORE initiative, as the latter was designed to develop referees within the confederation’s cross-regional setup to the elite level and on to their FIFA badges.
