By Paul Nicholson
May 15 – Just days after signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol), CONCACAF has hosted a three-day joint FIFA-Interpol Workshop in Miami. A second workshop will be hosted next week.
The workshop, titled ‘Train the Trainer for Football Players and Referees’, was led by Interpol’s Integrity in Sport Programme Manager, Julie Norris. The course, is aligned with Interpol’s Guide for Effective Training to ensure consistency of standards globally.
“The goal of the workshop is to train people in the CONCACAF region and provide them with knowledge, through a special tailored training programme, on how to prevent match fixing in our region,” said Dr Laila Mintas, CONCACAF’s director of sports integrity.
“We have chosen people for this training programme who have access to players and referees. After they have received and passed the training workshop they will be able to deliver their knowledge to other people. In that way we will be able to multiply the knowledge in our region.”
CONCACAF President and FIFA Vice President, Jeffrey Webb, said: ”We are committed to educate, identify, prevent and provide appropriate disciplinary sanctions to all professionals involved in any unethical and unlawful behaviour that would undermine the game.”
More than 25 participants from a cross section of areas within CONCACAF will take part in each course, including a Major League Soccer representative. The course aims to give participants the tools to help the recognition of match fixing propositions and specifically address issues of corruption.
“Interpol is pleased to help enhance CONCACAF’s capacity and that of its Member Associations in training targets of match-fixers to recognise, resist and report approaches, to ultimately preventing match- fixing,” said Dr. Noris.
“This is the fourth workshop on sports integrity in our region since 2012, and we embrace the opportunity to share this knowledge with key stakeholders, to keep the sanctity of our game intact,” added Webb.
Mintas said that more workshops are planned, but they will have a different objective.
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