FIFA President Urges African countries to Invest in Yang Talents

Addis Ababa October 22/2024 (ENA) President of FIFA Giovanni Vincenzo Infantino has encouraged African countries to further invest and unleash the potential of the continent’s young football players.

In his opening remarks at the 46th Ordinary General Assembly of CAF being held in Addis Ababa, FIFA President indicated that African football has evolved and become stronger.

Infantine stressed the need for investing in youth and creating opportunities, not just in one or two parts of the world, but all over the world.

To this effect, the president urged African nations to reinforce investments in youth talents.

“I encourage all of you to continue investing in youth football. Because those kids, those girls and boys who will play these youth competitions, these Youth World Cups under 17, will be the stars of tomorrow.

And they will make sure that sooner rather than later, an African country can win the World Cup as well,” he hoped.

Mentioning Morocco is set to host the FIFA World Cup in 2030 that would make the country as the second ever African nation to host the World Cup, Infantine noted that we are all looking forward to Morocco.

South Africa was the first African country which hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2010, it was indicated.

Speaking on FIFA’s investment that has been focusing on five football areas, the president pointed out the first one is football development that has been increasing from 250,000 USD to 2 million USD annually.

“This money is invested by all of you in football development, and you can see that because you know it when you play now the qualifiers of the AFCON or of the World Cup, there is no easy game anymore. Everyone is getting stronger.”

Healso mentioned another investment in the talent development scheme as part of football development.

“We've invested in refereeing development as part of these investments. And we can see the results at African level, but also of the African teams at global level,” he elaborated.

The other area is national team football, the president said and for the first time there will be nine or 10 African countries participating in the 2026 World Cup 2026 for the first time.

We doubled the number of African countries participating in the World Cup and this is boosting, obviously, football investment and football development all over Africa, he said.