UEFA chooses Georgia as pilot country to develop women’s football

Only days have passed since the UEFA Super Cup was held in spectacular fashion in Tbilisi, but the major football union is eager to continue its partnership with Georgia and develop women’s football for players and fans.

UEFA selected Georgia as a pilot country to develop women’s football and has encouraged the Georgian Football Federation (GFF) to set major strategic objectives to reach the goal of including more women in the sport.

Together the GFF and UEFA will soon launch a complementary program to support women’s football. To get this project moving, UEFA’s general coordinator Priscilla Salazar-Janssens Hewitt visited Georgia this week to learn about the potential of the country.

The Dutch specialist has spent three days in the country learning about the football infrastructure offered in Georgia and has held business meetings with high officials from GFF, including the coaches of the women’s football teams.

The UEFA representative said the conditions in Georgia were suitable to develop women’s football.

"In my country where 10,000 women play football it is easy to select candidates for the national team. Although it was not like this earlier and women’s football used to face similar challenges in the Netherlands as it does in Georgia today.

My goal is to learn about all the challenges that Georgia faces today and design a proper plan [to develop women’s football in Georgia] once I go back to UEFA. We will start activities according to this plan later in autumn,” said Hewitt.

GFF secretary general Revaz Arveladze added: "After meeting with the UEFA representatives we found out about seven to eight topics that need further work in autumn. We are glad that UEFA once again expressed its willingness to run another project in Georgia. We are ready to gain the experience which is being introduced in developed countries,” he said.

As part of the new project, UEFA representatives will visit Tbilisi at least six times in the near future. Detailed information about the project will be released in October.

UEFA started promoting women’s football in 2010.