UEFA Certificate in Football Management – Players’ edition (UEFA CFM)

Organisation of world football

Football is one of the few truly worldwide phenomena. It is also one of the most organised, with a pyramidal global hierarchy.

Our primary purpose here is to describe the organisational structure of world football, focusing first on the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which regulates the rules of the game, then on the roles of FIFA and UEFA (the game’s world and European governing bodies respectively), and finally on the other five continental football confederations.

We will also explain how football’s organisational structure has enabled its global expansion, examine how the system continues to evolve in order to take account of new stakeholders in the football ecosystem and, finally, identify the critical challenges facing the successful management of that ecosystem.

Strategic Management

Strategic management is defined as the management of an organisation’s resources in order to achieve its goals and objectives. It involves setting objectives, analysing the competitive environment, analysing the internal organisations, evaluating strategies and ensuring the management rolls out the strategies across the organisations.

The strategic management process results in a strategy can be defined as a set of planned actions and decisions aimed at achieving a long-term goal. The strategy could be for a football organisation as a whole, or could be for a specific department or project. The online module and chapter in the UEFA HFM presents a detailed model for how strategic decisions can be made, put into a strategic plan and implemented. The focus is on how a strategy for a national association as a whole can be formulated but the tools and methods presented can be applied at a departmental, project and individual level as well.

Operational Management

For a football association, operational management comprises the day-to-day activities, processes and structures that enable it to deliver its services to its stakeholders. This chapter covers four main topics. The first is human resource management. The main asset of any organisation is its people, so this section introduces the concepts of motivation, career management, incentives and organisational structure.

Football Marketing

The marketing of sport in general, and football in particular, has developed rapidly over the last two or three decades. Following developments in key markets such as the United States, its role and importance has been increasingly recognised by many sports, including football.

As such, international governing bodies, national associations, clubs and many other stakeholder organisations take football marketing very seriously. In fact, many of these organisations have dedicated marketing staff and departments

This chapter therefore provides an overview of this key area of management, specifically highlighting four main domains: sports marketing and the nature of the sports product; brand and marketing communications; licensing, ticketing and hospitality; and media rights. You are strongly recommended to read this chapter in conjunction with UEFA’s National Association Guide to Marketing, a book produced by UEFA to provide national associations with the latest tools and best practices in football marketing.

Communication, the media and public relations

Communication is an important part of the life of a national association or a football club. An effective communications strategy is essential for any organisation in today’s digital media environment, given the increasing pace at which information circulates and the reach of such information.

At the same time, people’s consumption patterns and search behaviours are evolving. This converging media and information landscape creates both challenges and opportunities for all football organisations.

Event and volunteer management

Beyond mega-events such as the EURO, a plethora of football events of varying sizes and significance take place. Some smaller events involve an international governing body, e.g. finals or final tournaments of international youth competitions, but many are predominantly run by national or regional associations.

Football events can be recurrent, such as national cup finals, or they can be one-off events if, by their very nature, they involve a different organiser and host territory on each occasion, such as the UEFA Futsal EURO. They can have a broad territorial impact or focus on a small area. In this session, we will mainly consider one-off events.

Football and social responsibility

FSR refers to the way that football organisations integrate moral, social and environmental concerns into their core functions. Engagement in stakeholder dialogue encourages societal issues to be tackled in a proactive manner and contributes to a positive impact on society at large.

FSR seeks to confront problematic moral, social and environmental behaviours (bad practices) relating to football. In contrast, good FSR practices offer examples of the positive influence that football organisations can have on society.