President's Foreword

The Oceania Football Confederation and its Member Associations entered 2021 with the intent of building a stronger foundation that would deliver on future strategy and planning.

Despite the challenges of going back to play, with the cancellation and postponement of all OFC Competitions, we succeeded in these goals.

I set a clear mandate as OFC President in 2019, for our football, people and communities across Oceania. One of these commitments focused on implementing the OFC Football Development Strategy 2019-2026 and we delivered and achieved many of those outcomes in 2021.

The pandemic did not stop the continued development of football, with local competitions across the region taking place. The Football Division have worked tirelessly with our Member Associations to deliver top-level development programmes across women’s football, refereeing, goalkeeping, coaching and high performance.

Alongside this, history was made for women’s football in our region with the launch of the ALL IN: OFC Women’s Football Strategy 2027 in July 2021. With the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 co-hosted in Australia and New Zealand, we moved to leverage this opportunity to bring women’s football to the forefront in Oceania and open pathways to grow the game from grassroots through to the elite levels.

Another key commitment was the completion of the Home of Football, and I am proud to say that this long-standing dream for OFC became a reality in September 2021. FIFA has been unwavering in its commitment to ensuring that football is developed across the world and without their support and funding, our dream of a dedicated football hub would not have been achieved. UEFA Assist also played a key role by providing funding needed to complete this project, and for that Oceania is grateful.

OFC is proactively leading the standard of good governance, accountability, and transparency across the region with our Member Associations to ensure we are effectively building the foundation to success. A good governance framework was initiated by the OFC Executive Committee, to be implemented as a guide.

Our Confederation-wide goal remains the same: to qualify two teams at the FIFA World Cups in 2026 and 2027. And with this benchmark, OFC has focused on building the foundation to adapt the football development strategy across the region in the wake of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Again, we are deeply appreciative of the support from FIFA for the COVID-19 Relief Plan and FIFA Forward 2.0, which helped maintain a high level of support to our Member Associations and ensured the swift and safe return of football.

I wish to express my thanks to UEFA Assist for the support we have received for the development of the OFC Learn platform and the approval on funding for our digital, livestreaming and broadcasting equipment and capacity building workshop for our 11 Member Associations.

I’d like to warmly welcome Allen Parker who joined the OFC Executive Committee on October 12, 2021, as President of the Cook Islands Football Federation and thank the rest of the committee for driving the vision and prompt decision making through the year.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you all for putting Oceania first and for committing to the vision for our game over the past 12 months. Last year was another challenging year for football, but with your support we continue to drive forward and work towards elevating football to new levels of excellence.

Lambert Maltock OFC President