Johnston’s Soccaskills Secures Fifa Endorsement
After more than 3 years of testing and development, the global grass roots skills program soccaskills will be officially launched with the full sanction and endorsement of FIFA at Football Expo in the Espace Ville de Cannes, France on Thursday the 10th of January 2002.
soccaskills is the revolutionary skills measurement and coaching system that enables coaches and players to accurately identify, benchmark and track progress in the critical area of skills training.
Much like the scoring and handicapping system in golf, any player, regardless of his abilities can apply standardised measurements of Distance, Accuracy and Time against the performance of a set of repeatable skill drills.
The skill drills include Dribbling, Shooting, Passing, Heading, Control and Small-Sided Games.
The ‘Distance Accuracy Time Analysis’ or (D.A.T.A.) generated becomes a unique and valuable personal profile for any player to measure and track improvement.
soccaskills has been favorably tested over a two year period with the FA Premier League and their academy teams and is the ‘Official Skills Measurement and ratings system of the FA Premier League.’
The program has been heralded by football insiders and as being key to the future of football’s skills development. It has the potential to re-define way players will learn to practice skills alone, at clubs or in school-yards. The measurement and learning breakthrough comes at a time when grass roots and education are hot topics for footballs governing bodies.
The Presidents of the 51 Football Federations in Europe have supported declarations on the social and educational value of grass roots football and reconfirmed their commitment to deliver accountable community programs. As a result Federations, Governments and educationalists are now asking for solid data and statistics in an effort to track trends and improvements in teaching and playing the game at club, school and community levels.
As well as having a huge impact at grass roots levels, the new information and DATA created by soccaskills brings substantial benefits to Professional Players, Managers, Clubs, Federations, Con-Federations as well as for FIFA.
The FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter said, ‘The global development objectives of FIFA are to improve the levels of skills, to increase participation, to promote quality versus quantity and to make the game socially more inclusive. The soccaskills program has been designed and tested with all of these as its focus and has the full support of FIFA.’
The program is the brainchild of Australian inventor Craig Johnston. Johnston is a former midfielder of Liverpool Football Club and the creator of the Adidas Predator football shoe.
Mr Johnston said, ‘FIFA has always been pro-active with grass roots initiatives. They have contributed greatly to the development of the soccaskills program over the last 3 years and we are delighted to have earned their full support and official backing.’
For further information please contact:
Craig Johnston
soccaskills
T: 01494 882597
M: 07785244237
E: Craig.Johnston@soccaskills.com
W: www.soccaskills.com