Ghana Football Association President (GFA), Kurt Edwin Simeon-Okraku, is impressed and delighted with the progress made by the landmark “Catch Them Young” Refereeing policy.
Thirty (30) young boys and girls have been officiating at the Fourth Edition of the KGL Inter-Regional U17 Colts Championship, ongoing at the GFA technical centre, the Ghanaman Soccer Centre of Excellence.
The young and passionate teenagers have exhibited top-quality performances at the Championships as the GFA continues to invest in their talent to ensure their continued growth and the improvement in refereeing in Ghana Football.
“Whenever I’ve had a chance to speak about the Catch Them Young strategy or policy, I am filled with emotion. Not only because the dream that I had is seeing the light of the day, but also because we identified a big problem in our football ecosystem and we found, perhaps, the best solution ever to address it,” President Simeon-Okraku said.
“We thought that the best way is to start investing in talents at a very young age. Now, in football, you identify talents early, develop and train them. We rejected the idea of training matured people as referees and it was for good reasons. For us, the best way is to identify kids who have the right levels of passion to officiate, because passion is key.
“We gave them the enabling environment for them to develop their passion and to realize their dreams. So, in 2020, we launched this policy.”
“Over time, we have trained and invested in close to 2,000 young boys and girls from all the regions of our country. And what we are seeing here today is a sign of our collective future when it comes to refereeing. We had all-female officials for the MTN FA Cup; we’ve seen all-girls match officials in the boys’ match between Ashanti and Northern Regions. We have female FIFA referees in our system and it’s our desire that we will continue to invest in this policy by providing them with basic logistics to perform their duties.”
President Simeon-Okraku said the GFA will continue to invest in the young referees and offer them platforms to exhibit their talents, reiterating a pivotal decision to make the top referees (male and female) full time employees of the Football Association.
“We’ll continue to give them the opportunities over time. The vision is to produce best referees for our dear country. In the month of August, we would outdoor our first professional referees in this country and they will come from the Catch Them Young Refereeing policy.”
“That will be a big step for Ghana. Referees who would only concentrate on the art and craft of refereeing. We’ll announce the list at the GFA Congress in August. I’m happy to say that they’ll come from the Catch Them Young Referee Policy. This will be a big landmark for our dear country.”
The President said he was convinced that other Member Associations (MAs) will emulate the thriving policy.
“I know that other MAs across Africa, across the world, are looking at what we are doing. FIFA is very much interested in what we have done and what we are doing. And I think that these good strategies and policies will ultimately benefit our football ecosystem and all of us in football should be happy about our collective hard work.” he concluded.
These young referees currently officiate in the Regional competitions such as 2nd and 3rd Division Leagues, the KGL Foundation U-17 Inter Regional Championship, the Women’s Super-Cup, and the Division One League Super Cup.
These young referees were selected from the ten football regions of Ghana after they exhibited top-quality performances during the year.
