The Executive Committee of Goa Football Association (GFA) has approved the appointment of Peter Fernandes as marketing and operations officer of GFA, while Peter Valles was made the technical officer.
Fernandes will be largely responsible for strengthening the operational and marketing aspects, while ensuring that GFA's brand profile and communication strategy with various stakeholders is improved, a press release issued by GFA here today said.
The decisions were taken by GFA under the FIFA State Development Programme in a meeting of the Executive Committee on Wednesday.
Fernandes has been associated with the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand and the Hockey Village India Project, and brings strong operational and marketing capabilities, it said.
Valles's role at GFA will be to work with All India Football Federation's (AIFF) Technical Director to create a strong technical foundation for the state teams and elite development programmes.
Valles has been associated with Goan state teams in various capacities for the last 30 years and has also represented Goa as a footballer for nearly 10 years. He was the head coach of the India U14 team, the release said.
Valles, on the occasion, addressed the members and laid out his immediate plans for the future.
The GFA members were of the opinion that the FIFA intervention is much needed.
The FIFA State Development Programme is a plan in line with the four-year 'AIFF Strategic Plan' with the national body and FIFA taking the onus of improving technical and marketing capacities at six state associations as these would in turn significantly impact the development of Indian football.
The meeting commenced with a minute's silence in memory
of ex-GFA Executive Committee member and Match Commissioner Romeo Pires.
In other developments, the committee reviewed the current GFA tournaments and resolved to strengthen the mechanism to finish tournaments within schedule.
New formats were explored, and the members felt that the same should be shared with the clubs for their feedback.
The committee also appreciated the role of match organisers, grounds in-charge, clubs, team managements, referees, staff and volunteers whose cooperation has been the key driver in ensuring that the tournaments run on schedule.
They had a special word of praise for the women's sub-committee under whose guidance, the inaugural Inter College Women's League was organised successfully.
In other decisions, the committee discussed the procedural aspects of registration, problems and issues faced, as well as solutions and ideas to developing more robust systems of player registration were deliberated upon.
