This article is part of an introduction to the policies and activities of each Prefectural Football Association divided into 12 categories: ‘Seniors’, ‘Class 1’, ‘Class 2’, ‘Class 3’, ‘Class 4’, ‘Kids’, ‘Women’, ‘Futsal’, ‘Beach Soccer’, ‘Referees Committee’, ‘Facilities Committee (Environmental Maintenance)’ and ‘Technical Committee’. We hope you read this article through and become familiar with the various activities held across the country.
This is the fourth article, in which we introduce activities of “Class 2".

*This article has been published in ‘REGIONAL NEWS‘ in the June issue of JFA news.

Class 2 Activities – Kochi Football Association

Fostering U-18 generation and addressing future challenges
YOSHIMOTO Tsuyoshi, Chairman of Class 2 Committee of Kochi Football Association

[Overview of U-18 Generation]
The Class 2 generation in Kochi Prefecture only consists of high school teams who belong to All Japan High School Athletic Federation (Koutairen). Despite facing a variety of issues including a decline in the number of participants due to the falling birth rate and the increasing number of joint teams participating in competitions, we aim to expand football families and improve quality of coaches in a long run based on the JFA’s mission and in a spirit of player’s first.

[Player Development]
We have established a working group for youth in order to promote our unique development “Kochi’s way” in accordance with the JFA’s “Japan’s way.” To improve playing and training environments for our youth generation, we try to understand the current situation of each class.
Activities include analysing the U-12 training centre models in Kochi (We are scheduled to have these in more cities.) and key competitions from Class 2 to 4, releasing information on player issues we find out in those analysis, restructuring training environments for youth generation, and encouraging “to change mindsets” and “to share future directions” for improvement of coaching quality. We also host our own conferences as well.
Our Class 2 technical committee has also carried forward building up the team for the National Sports Festival. We work together with other classes such as holding training matches and U-13 and U-14 training centres in cooperation with Class 3 coaches.

[Youth referees development]
With their sights on a Kochi native Nagi Toshiyuki, who just worked in the FIFA World Cup Brazil, the number of registrations as referees in U-18 has been increasing year by year. They have gained their experience in officiating U-18 league matches as assistant referees or forth referees. And then we had the first Class 3 referee two years ago. Our future objective is to develop as many high-class referees as possible while continuing the development and coaching of youth referees.

[Issues to solve]
In Kochi, we now have a club that has franchise and its roots in our local community and aims to advance to the J-League. That gives dream and hope to our U-18 generation. Yet our infrastructure is far from being well-organised. There are tons of issues to solve such as building a training centre with multiple pitches and a club house and providing more fields with artificial turf. We continue to carry on our efforts across class boundaries to expand football families and reenergise our local communities as well as develop players.