By Matthew Mountford-Brock
The head of international relations at The Football Association, Jane Bateman, told UCFB that the governing body are signing memorandums of understanding with fellow national associations to better their chances of international success.
Earlier this year, England met with representatives of Germany’s Football Association and signed an agreement that allows both nations to share ideas and strategies with each other to develop the game and promote success at both associations.
Speaking to UCFB following her Executive Guest Speaker Series session at UCFB Wembley, Bateman said: “Germany win a lot of tournaments, they host a lot of tournaments and they are generally regarded as one of the most powerful and influential national associations in the world.”
She added: “We met with them earlier this year and we signed a memorandum of understanding to look at how we co-operate together whereby we both share expertise, knowledge and experience to better the game in each of our countries, so a core part of that is technical.”
There are 211 national associations, and although it is important to have a relationship with all of them, The FA is working on building strategic relationships with countries and associations that England could learn specific knowledge from.
Bateman added: “We have a memorandum for example with Japan, which is the leading football association in Asia. Very different to us, but for example they won a women’s world cup. We haven’t won one and we want to know how they did it. What strategies did they employ? What tactics? What did they learn from that?”
The FA will be hoping that the growing strength of these relationships will lead to results in upcoming tournaments, with the Russia 2018 World Cup fast approaching and England playing a host role in 2020 for the semi-finals and final of the European Championships.
