Setareki Hughes, middle, of Fiji against New Zealand in an international. Photo: Hagen Hopkins
At least two island nations have revealed they are now working on having teams and the local systems are set up to support the new Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) Professional League.
Fiji and Vanuatu are two of the first countries to give the new league the thumbs up.
Fiji Football Association chief executive officer Mohammed Yusuf said they are now working on appointing a board who will spearhead the setting up of the Fijian professional football league team.
"The Board in its meeting has endorsed a Fiji Pro League team under our banner to take part," Yusuf confirmed from Suva on Wednesday.
"We will formally appoint our board of directors in our council meeting for this project. They will then take charge and recruit coaching staff and set-up."
The Vanuatu Football Federation (VFF), which is meeting this week at West Ambrym in Port Vila has the new League competition on their agenda.
VFF President Lambert Maltock, who is also the OFC president, has told the Vanuatu Daily Post that the professional league would play a critical role in elevating football in Oceania.
"As leaders of Oceania football, we are responsible for the growth of football, and we need to move forward to make this happen," he said.
"This will mean that the national federations will have to form professional clubs that will affiliate with the (OFC) professional league.
"In Vanuatu, once the concept is approved in our congress, we will start work on scouting and recruiting players who, in effect will become professionals, meaning they will be paid to play in our professional club."
Maltock said for a long time now something has been missing in Oceania football.
He added the professional league is what is needed to support the OFC's long-term goal of qualifying two teams to the FIFA World Cups in 2026-2027.
Maltock revealed at the VFF congress that the league will be established by 2025 and Vanuatu's own professional league will be confirmed by 2030.
Vanuatu Football Federation congress members at their meeting in Vila on Wednesday, 13 December 2023. Photo: VFF
FIFA support
Meanwhile, FIFA chief Gianni Infantino has thrown his "200 percent support" behind the new league in Oceania, which he said will be a crucial step for the development of the game in the region.
Infantino told the OFC's 29th Ordinary Congress in Auckland earlier this year, before the Women's World Cup, that OFC's ambitions to qualify two teams for senior world cups can only happen if there is such a high-level competition for men and women.
He said it would be a "true game-changer" for Oceania.
"We are aware that there are challenges, distances, travels, and finances, but we have to transform these challenges into opportunities and that's exactly what we are doing together with the FIFA team, the OFC team, working together in a true partnership. To establish this professional league here in Oceania.
"I'm 200 percent behind it. I believe in it. I will be here for the opening for sure and for the final as well. So it gives me good reasons to come back."
Infantino and Maltock had met in Paris before that where the OFC Professional League was revealed, after it was approved by the OFC Executive Committee in November last year.
