We will introduce the principles and activities of each prefectural football association under the 12 different themes — "seniors," "the first class," "the second class," "the third class," "the fourth class," "kids," "women," "futsal," "beach football," "referees committee," "infrastructural committee" and "technical committee." We would like you to take a look at it so you will know what sort of activities are being held around the nation.

Today, we introduce the activities of the Fukui Football Association on its senior categories.

Approaches on senior football - Fukui Football Association

TAKAYAMA Nobuhiko, the Senior Committee of the Fukui Football Association

"The more senior football, the more contributions the society."
I feel that senior football in Fukui is about five years behind from those in other prefectures. We have fourteen teams registered in 2013 and only the O-40 category. It's the worst in Hokushinetsu region. But considering we had only six teams ten years ago, our group has certainly got bigger.

Senior football while ago was mostly dominated by ex-players who had playing background in high-school, college and senior level. But today we have more of less-experienced players including ones with only junior-high-school level of past experience or ones who just got inspired to start playing because their kids had started playing. But for these less-experienced players, registering with the JFA and playing in a prefectural senior league is a little too overwhelming. So our senior committee together with associations in cities and towns started the O-30 senior division in the citizen's league in 2002. The slogan of the league is "Start with Recreational Soccer". This league has been appreciated by various groups of teams and players such as teams with no notable playing background, fathers teams that were organized by fathers who had happened to get to know each other at their kids' team, and teams with players over 30 who can't really compete any more in the senior league and against players in their twenties. All the teams newly registered as senior clubs in past several years are ones which stepped up from this citizens' league. So we want to keep this good trend going.

Our goal for next five years in terms of the number of registered teams is sixteen in the O-40 league, eight in the O-50 and sixteen in the O-35 Masters League, which we will launch later, and they come out to the total of forty. In order to achieve this, we need to be creative and need these leagues to be attractive. I think getting more teams is possible if we can keep making the senior league exciting together with the current 14 teams in the league..

The more and better senior leagues we have, the more merits it gives to the whole soccer world in this prefecture. The generations of senior league players have many of their members being successful in the worlds of business or education. When we get more of those people involved in soccer, it will impact the maintenance of facilities and development of kids. We are trying not only to expand senior soccer, but also to contribute to the growth of the soccer industry and the society itself by getting those generations of people involved.