Five days after FIFA President Gianni Infantino launched the first of three FIFA seminars for European member associations, representatives from UEFA and 15 European federations met once again at the FIFA office in Paris on 13 September for round two.

The seminar was led by the Member Associations Europe team, with the main focus being on cooperation on the development of football, and also the evolution of the FIFA Forward Programme. Women’s football, Football for Schools projects and opportunities around the launch of FIFA+ at the beginning of the year were also on the table for discussion.

"This type of event is very important, both for us and for the member associations," said Elkhan Mammadov, Director Member Associations Europe. “The seminar is focused on them and on the ways that we can give them more support. Meetings like these add a great deal to the ways in which we can work together and make football genuinely global.” "This seminar is already a success based on the feedback that we received from the first seminar," he continued. "It will be the first in a long series, as in addition to this 13 September workshop, we are looking at organising other more specific ones in the future, in other countries and other cities, to make sure that the member associations can get the most benefit out of them."

What the participants said: Joel Wolff General secretary of the Luxembourg national association (FLF) It’s so important to have contacts! We’re coming out of two years of COVID, during which time human interaction was often limited to virtual meetings. Organising this type of seminar is constructive – it leads to exchanges. I’m delighted with the collaboration that we have with FIFA. Beyond our cooperation on the infrastructure projects that we are developing, in particular regarding new training grounds for our training centre, communications between our federation and FIFA work very well. Sarkhan Hajiyev General secretary of the Azerbaijan national football association (AFFA) Our sincere thanks to FIFA for organising this very instructive seminar. This type of gathering is very important as it leads to fruitful exchanges. We then relay information back to our own offices, and we work further on the various aspects. For a federation to be able to discuss its points of view with FIFA and for FIFA to take them into account, it can only be positive for the development of all the Member Associations and for football. Hakan Sjostrand General secretary of the Swedish national football association (SVFF) During the seminar we spoke about football and how to develop our sport, on and off the pitch, as football is important for society as a whole. We had some very good exchanges on the subject. After the pandemic that we’ve had, I think that it’s very important for us to see one another again and to meet up. We had a dialogue that was a necessary one – it’s our responsibility as well to develop football via these meetings, and it’s a very good thing that they exist.