CAF introduces the new Women’s Club Licensing System to WCL Clubs

As part of advancing professionalism in women’s football clubs in Africa, CAF held a Club Licensing workshop in Cairo for teams that are currently participating in the TotalEnergies CAF Women’s Champions League.

The workshop, organized by CAF with the support of FIFA, was attended by coaches and managers from the eight clubs that have qualified for the final tournament.

Speaking at the workshop, CAF Vice-President and Chairperson of Women’s Football Committee, Kanizat Ibrahim said: “Having strong women’s football clubs is a guarantee of quality in the future. We owe it to ourselves to build a structure that respects standards and CAF is happy to support women’s clubs in order to improve professionalism.”

The objectives of the workshop were to:

• Introduce the new CAF Women´s club licensing system and regulations to the clubs;

• Explain the general objectives of the club licensing system;

• Explain the club licensing criteria and requirements;

• Understand the organization and structure of the participating clubs;

• Have one on one meetings with the clubs to evaluate level of compliance of club licensing;

• Gather administrative, financial, and competition information related to the participating clubs;

• Provide support and advise on fulfilment of the club licensing requirements;

CAF has worked on important updates on the Club Licensing Program at the continental level, which includes launching the inaugural edition of the CAF Women’s Club Licensing Regulations. This step comes in line with the creation of the 1st Edition of the CAF Women´s Champions League 2021 whereby clubs needed to meet certain criteria in order to obtain a licence and be able to participate in the competition.

CAF & FIFA Women’s Football departments and CAF Club Licensing gave brilliant presentations about women’s football clubs and development strategies.

The introduction and implementation of the system allows CAF to better understand the realities of the top women’s football clubs and accelerate the professionalization of the Women’s game in the continent.

The CAF Women’s Club Licensing Regulations focuses on the sporting, administration, infrastructure, finance, and legal pillars. It is particularly important to mention that the CAF Women’s club Licensing criteria are simple and realistic for the clubs to meet and is applied to the women’s football clubs participating in every edition of the CAF Women’s Champions League.

In view for the participation in the CAF Women´s Champions League 2021 which is organized in two phases (zonal qualifiers and final phase), the CAF member associations concluded a licensing process at national level in respect to the obligation of their clubs having to meet the criteria and requirements set by CAF for participation in the competition.

For the 2021 CAF WCL edition, 34 clubs were licensed and 32 took part in zonal qualifiers.

Source: cafonline.com