A school league will be launched in Kerala shortly under AFC’s Vision India Project Kerala. A total of 56 teams from schools in seven districts of this southern Indian state will take part in the under-11 school league. The top two teams from each district will then be invited to take part in a festival of football at a central location. AFC’s Grassroots and Youth development officer, Annathurai Ranganathan, recently conducted workshops in Cochin, Kozhikode and Thiruvalla to raise awareness of all aspects of grassroots and youth football development and to plan for the school league.
AFC President Mohamed bin Hammam has strongly reiterated his support for the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to determine the age of players in youth tournaments. Speaking at the launch of a sports radiology course at AFC House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Bin Hammam recalled past tournaments where overage players had been fielded and stated his belief that the appliance of science would play its part in ensuring “honour” at age-group level. “Some years back, teams fielded overage players in the AFC U-16 and U-17 competitions. Those member associations did not care about the preparation of the team as they only wanted to bring in players that would help them win or at least not lose too badly. In sport, we have to compete with honour and we must respect ourselves. We will try, with the support of FIFA, to introduce MRI tests to prove the age of players,” said Bin Hammam.
AFC recently broke new ground in football for the disabled with the introduction of The Football Association’s (FA) coaching disabled footballers course in January. The main objective of the three-day seminar was to comprehensively educate the 18 participants, all of whom are elite coaching instructors, in a broad range of subjects related to coaching disabled footballers. In addition to the planning and organising of coaching sessions, the course also dealt with issues of safety and communication with players with various types of disability. It also covered the appropriate language to use and how to interact with players in a way that recognises their particular disability but also respects their individuality.

Leading Latin Trio Untouchable
The last four weeks have seen international football take a breather between the Africa Cup of Nations and the year’s other big events, UEFA EURO 2008™ in Austria and Switzerland and the preliminary competition for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™. Only a dozen or so international matches have been played, producing no more than a ripple on the latest instalment of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking. The top 14 positions remain the same as
last month, with Argentina, Brazil and Italy all maintaining a fairly comfortable advantage over their pursuers. Honduras (43rd, up 7) are the biggest movers in the top 50, whereas the highest climbers of the month are to be found in the middle of the ranking, namely Equatorial Guinea (64th, up 14), Oman (86th, up 12), Guyana (113th, up 19) and Grenada (157th, up 11), with the two CONCACAF teams enjoying some success in recent weeks. Equatorial Guinea and Oman, meanwhile, have benefited from the devaluation of matches from last year from which they emerged either empty-handed or did not score highly.
Due to the low level of movement up and down the ranking, the composition of the top 50 also remains unchanged compared to last month: UEFA has 27 teams, whereas Africa, South America, Asia and the CONCACAF countries have nine, six, five and three representatives respectively.

USA reclaim lead
Once again, the Algarve Cup, a competition always played in the early part of the year, has led to a change at the very top of the FIFA/Coca-Cola Women’s World Ranking. Just as they did in 2006, the USA used the opportunity presented by the meeting of the world’s ten leading teams in southern Portugal to make their mark at the top and to set their sights on defending their title at the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament in Beijing. Their four victories, most notably over Norway and in the final against Denmark, enabled them to reclaim top spot, which they had lost to world champions Germany following the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Pia Sundhage’s American charges also profited from the two defeats suffered by Germany (2nd, down 1) against Denmark and Norway.
With three victories apiece as well as a defeat against the USA, Norway (5th, unchanged) and Denmark in particular (8th, unchanged) have emerged in a positive light, despite not actually gaining in position. At the midway point between the Women’s World Cup and the Olympic Football Tournament, the Chinese women’s team (14th, down 1) once again failed to find the upward momentum they were looking for and ended the group phase in last place with no points. The best-placed Asian teams are still DPR Korea (6th, unchanged) and Japan (10th, up 1). Meanwhile, Tunisia (78th, up 11) are the team that have taken the biggest strides inside the top 100 since December.