4 June 2024 – The Club Licensing Online Platform (CLOP) National Workshop got underway in Johannesburg with the hosts, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and the South African Football Association (SAFA), welcoming attendees to the three-day event on Tuesday.
Clubs from the Premier Soccer League (PSL) and the Hollywoodbets Super League are attending the workshop, which is mainly focused on the in-depth training sessions for users of the platform.
SAFA President Dr Danny Jordaan was happy that CAF said the Association is the leader in women’s football on the continent and on complying with the regulations
“It is a matter that is still to be addressed in this workshop, but we are very happy listening to CAF itself acknowledging that we are the leaders in women’s football and on complying with the regulations,” Dr Jordaan said.
“The other problem as you can see, you see that Liberia is here, they are here to play against Namibia because they don’t have stadiums and if you look at the high number of African teams coming to South Africa to play their matches away from home, it means that at least another 24 African countries need to upgrade their stadium requirements to satisfy the CAF club licensing system.
“In South Africa most of our teams have fully compliant stadiums and there is no issue. But it’s not just for South Africa, it’s continent-wide and you can see where the gaps are, and those gaps are the thing that we have to work on and close. The other matter is clubs being obligated to have women’s team. We indicated from the beginning that one way of accelerating the professionalisation of women’s football is to make sure that your professional clubs, men’s clubs, have women’s teams, and the clear example is Mamelodi Sundowns.”
CAF Head of Professional Football, Muhammad F. Sidat, said the objective of the CLOP workshop is to provide full training to the clubs on the new club licensing online platform.
“This CLOP is now an electronic tool, an electronic system that CAF has implemented, which requires the entire club licensing process to be done in a digital way, in a paperless way. This means for the new season, for the CAF Interclub 24-25 season, the Champions League and Confederations Cup, the South African clubs that are going to take part or are going to be engaged in these competitions have to apply for a license through the CLOP, through the online platform,” he said.
The general objective of the workshop are:
– Training of the users of the CLOP
– Present the CAF Club Licensing regulatory framework (edition 2022) for men and women
– Explanation of mandatory criteria for the domestic and continental competitions.
