Football - SFF chairman calls on President Michel |05 March 2015

The chairman of the Seychelles Football Federation (SFF) Elvis Chetty yesterday met President James Michel to discuss various football development issues.

President Michel, who is also the Patron of Seychelles football, welcomed Mr Chetty to State House yesterday morning, where Mr Chetty said the main topic of discussion was the development of beach soccer locally.

“The main aim of the meeting was to let the president know how far we have gone in the development of beach soccer. As you all know we will soon be hosting the Confederation of African Football (Caf) African Beach Soccer Championships, which will also serve as qualifiers for the Beach Soccer World Cup,” Mr Chetty said.

He said he updated the president on how the construction of infrastructure are going, as well as the team’s progress and development.

“The president also wanted an update on youth football development, where we talked about the youth academies, of which we have twelve around the country, reaching around 1200 children,” Mr Chetty added.

He also revealed to the president that the federation is hoping to bring the youth academies to a higher level and develop more infrastructure, which will be aided by Fifa.

Mr Chetty, who has occupied the position of SFF chairman for over two years now, said that the youth academies are operational for 10 months in a year and with the children training three times per week, the federation gets to discover new talents on a regular basis.

One of the biggest talking points so far this year has been the reformatting of the Seychelles football leagues, which Mr Chetty has revealed will begin from August up until April the following year.

However, he said that the federation will hold a single round league when the ongoing Airtel Cup ends.

This league needs to be done so that Seychelles can have a representative for the 2016 Caf Champions League, as with the new league format (from August to April) a new league champion would have had to wait until April next year to be crowned.

“We have an obligation with Caf to ensure that Seychelles has a league champion to compete in the champions league each year and this one-round league will enable the team to have that opportunity,” Mr Chetty said.