17 happy sports managers and received their diploma for completing the training with Double Pass. The training aims to increase the participants’ competence and security in their roles.
“The level of professional content has been really high and there have been many interesting football discussions from a strategic perspective”, says Svante Samuelsson”, sports manager at Swedish Professional Football Leagues.

The areas touched upon during the four two-day conferences held during the year in Stockholm and Malmö are, among others, club strategy, organization, leadership, law, football philosophy and player recruitment. During some of the sessions, the focus has been on improving both the strategic and everyday collaboration between the academy and senior operations.

“I am very satisfied. With Double Pass´performance as well as with the Sporting directors focus and commitment. From a league point of view it is vital to strengthen the Sporting Directors´professional knowledge, which will help them to build their sqauds and coaching staff in a long term and more strategic way. I´m convinced the this education programme has been very developing in that ambition”, says Svante Samuelsson and adds.

“A bonus is that during the programme the participants has created a very strong group together and everyone has built relations and networks that will be useful in their daily work in their club.”

Double Pass was founded in 2004 and works to help clubs, leagues and associations develop their operations, both organizationally and football-wise. The Belgian company has previously been involved in projects together with SEF, including last year’s digital training for development managers.

Stig Meylemans is responsible for the training on the Double Pass side. He says that it was an honor and a privilege to work with all the sporting officials of Swedish elite football.

“The level was high on all modules which gave our International Double Pass Experts the opportunity to provide content on top level and create interactive workshops with high quality. We are strongly convinced that after this 9-month educational onsite and online programme all participants have a clear and better understanding of the modern role of a Sporting Director. Starting from their own background and the 10+1 topics of an International Sporting Director, we established a personal education journey for all them. This should make them capable of implementing many of these key topics into their daily work”, says Stig.

Hans Vander Elst is the Director of Football of Double Pass. He is also very pleased with the initiatives Swedish Professional Football Leagues and Swedish Clubs are  taking with Double Pass to develop the Swedish Football Eco-system.
“We were working a long time in England and Germany and more recently in Denmark and are proud to see how Talent Development Systems were evolving there. As Double Pass want to inspire all Sport-Technical Leadership and stakeholders in Sweden to grow the same way and we are looking forward to the next steps”, says Hans.