The Match Commissioner and Referee Assessor Education Course commenced on Wednesday at Football House in the capital. The two-day affair aims at improving the standard of refereeing ahead of the I-League.

Kushal Das, AIFF General Secretary, who inaugurated the seminar said: “This is an important step towards perfection of refereeing decisions on the football pitch. I hope that the next few days will be productive.”

Eighteen Match Commissioners are taking part in the Seminar.

Head of Referees Goutam Kar, who is conducting the Seminar stressed on the challenges ahead. “The seminar is aimed at taking match operations to a higher level. The job of a Match Commissioner cum Referee Assessor is unique and difficult,” he maintained.

“We intend to focus on match operations and will take into account every detail of a particular match. Also included will be media operations, broadcasting, marketing and overall visibility of AIFF events,” he added.

Ravi Shankar, a participant at the Seminar spelt out the importance of the Match Commissioner while supervising a match in order to improve refereeing standards.

“The role of an Assessor is to bring forth uniformity among referees. We need to report what we see. Focus should be on the match and all pre-conceived opinions need to be kept aside. Everything needs to be judged on merit,” he opined.

“A Match Commissioner must be able to view a match through the eyes of the referee. At no time, he can be biased.”

The list of Match Commissioners present:
Mrinal Roy, RD Show, J Ravishankar, Rizwan Ul Haq, JS Nagvenkar, Gulab Chauhan, Sagar Sen, Sumanta Ghosh, Gopinath Pyne, Supriya Bhattacharya, Binod Kumar Singh, Inayethulla Khan, Ak Mamukoya, CM Ramesh Babu, S Suresh, P Basker, JP Singh, Walter Pereira, Dhanraj More

(AIFF Press Release)