Staff at New Zealand Football are working through a 148-page report produced by FIFA to benchmark how our sport stacks up when benchmarked against other countries for talent development.
The report is the output of nearly two years’ research in which 190 FIFA-affiliated national bodies took part in the project and its publication Increasing Global Competitiveness: An analysis of the talent development ecosystem in New Zealand.
NZF Technical Director Andy Boyens said: “We will now be taking some time to analyse everything in the report, understand how it relates to the unique landscape we have in New Zealand and then seeing how we can, alongside the football community, bring to life some of the recommendations linked to the strategy for Football in New Zealand.”
The study analyses performances in key areas:
- Management and resources
- National teams
- Domestic competitions
- Talent development and identification
- Academies
- Education
The report summarises its findings about New Zealand’s performance in each area, and makes recommendations.
Some elements of the report have been overtaken by events, such as the pending change to the men’s national team head coach and the vacant position of high-performance manager.
Boyens said: “I’m pleased to say that we have already made progress on a number of the areas highlighted in the report and we will continue to see the impact of projects like our Youth National League which has just completed its first boys and girls season.”
To provide benchmarking data, the 30 FIFA high-performance specialists who compiled the document engaged with 205 national bodies, of which 190 completed their return information by the January 2021 deadline.
The information collected included 2,140 surveys, 1,143 interviews and gathered data from 85,000 questions.
Main photo: Credit – FIFA.
Read the report here
Click here to download the 148-page PDF of the report >>>>
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