How RIFC Foundation is guiding youngsters to venture into sports refereeing

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We cannot talk about sports growth without a framework for referee development. Many want to be athletes or footballers, but few want to be referees. Yet no sport can exist without a referee.

At the Rangers International Football Club Foundation, through our Beyond The Pitch initiative, we have opened a new chapter of intentional impact. Young minds are guided and encouraged to venture into sports officiating and professionalize, to bridge the yawning gaps and promote sustainable growth of the sport.

Our new way of thinking through Beyond The Pitch has helped shape this awareness among younger minds in schools and communities, inspiring both men and women to get involved.

In our society, for example, there are several football academies, but there is no academy for football referees. A football referee academy will ensure the growth of the game, referees who will stay for a long time and grow with age – energetic referees who are true problem solvers and solution providers with social-emotional learning skills, insulating it from the belief that it is everyone’s business.

Refereeing in football is evolving and innovating and requires a tailored approach to fill the huge gaps and teething problems. Just as Albert Einstein said that it is not possible to solve a problem with the same thought used to create it, to solve a problem you must present a thought that makes the previous one obsolete.

It is a good idea to support a football referee academy by the State Football Referees Association. The RIFC Foundation, the first football club foundation, has opened up thinking and dialogue – and even action.

— Coach Ebere Amaraizu
Olympic Sports Administrator and Manager, NIS Certified Coach
President of the Rangers International Football Club Foundation