Students from as far as Australia, Japan, Morocco, Canada and Uzbekistan have travelled to 冈本视频 (冈本视频) Leicester to start studying on the renowned FIFA Master’s course.
Regarded as one of the best sports management courses in the world, the one-year programme sees students spend a term at 冈本视频’s International Centre for Sports History and Culture (ICSHC) before moving on to complete their studies at both the SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, Italy, and Switzerland’s University of Neuchâtel.
The course, which is co-ordinated by the Centre International d’Etude du Sport (CIES) and supported by football’s world governing body FIFA, last month was named as Europe’s top ranked postgraduate sports management course by SportBusiness for the 14th time. The course was also ranked by the same organisation as the second-best sports management course in the world.
While in Leicester, the cohort of 28 students will be studying themes such as sports heritage, sports history, equality and diversity in sport, global sport and a range of contemporary issues facing the industry. In addition, the class will have the opportunity to engage with a number of guest lecturers from the world of British and international sport.
Dylan Holmes is an icon for her club Adelaide United in her native Australia. She played more than 100 times for the club, including a stint as captain, as well as co-ordinated the club’s United in Schools programme where she worked with players delivering workshops in local schools.
As a respected leader in the locker room, Dylan, 29, became a member of the Professional Footballers Australia board, representing players across both the men’s and women’s game, advocating for player’s welfare and giving players a direct voice in how the game is run in Australia and internationally.
Her role working with unions prompted Dylan to explore areas of the beautiful game that she hadn’t experienced as a player, and she realised she wanted to learn more about the sports industry more broadly and applied to the FIFA Master course.
She said: “I wanted to do a programme where I'd get some really good transferable skills but also meet a really great group of people from different backgrounds to kind of influence that thinking.
“Getting to see the other side of the sports industry through collective bargaining agreement negotiations, through advocating for players rights and welfare and I found that I was really passionate about that.
“Hopefully I can take what I learned from here and ideally would love to work in women's football again at some point. Who knows what the future holds, I haven’t bought a ticket home.”
Midfielder Stephanie Al-Naber is no stranger to international football, having scored an impressive 79 goals in 128 games for the Jordanian Women’s international team. She sits on the board as head of the women’s committee at the Jordan Football Federation while working as an investor at a sports and entertainment company.
Looking at going back into education, she hopes that studying the FIFA Master will enable her to help the women’s game keep growing in Jordan and lift more women into professional roles within management, federations and clubs.
Stephanie said: “Knowledge is the most powerful tool nowadays. I think the future is bright as a lot more women are getting into the game, not only playing but getting in the management side, federation clubs and so on.
“So, I guess we have more professionals that know the game more, but we're missing the gaps that we need to fill and are willing to give their time to develop that game.
“What's nice about this FIFA programme is being here in three beautiful cities, top universities, getting to know people from all over the world with different perspectives, networking. I think that's what would motivate me to go back to Jordan with different mindsets of doing it differently.”
Mohammad Salaheldin is also among the cohort. The 28-year-old from Egypt was the Football Operations Manager in his home country for Right to Dream, a football youth academy system that originally started in Ghana and has since been bought by the Mansour Group.
Young players progress into the Right to Dream residential academy where they hone their footballing skills as well as receive an education. Mohammad was part of the team implementing the strategy across Egypt and he has enrolled on the FIFA Master’s in the hope of brining new ideas to Right to Dream.
He said: “A dream of mine is just to develop as a sports executive and I feel this programme ranked number one in Europe will help me to do that.
“I for sure will learn a lot and bring that back to Africa and the Middle East and Egypt as well and maybe back to Right to Dream as well just to maybe introduce new ideas to the different strategies we have going on and to the different locations we have.”
While the course is supported by FIFA, it is not limited to just professionals working, or aspiring to work, within football. Before joining the course, Shweta Vishwanathan, 34, handled funding, logistics, and annual training and competition calendars for hockey, badminton, rowing and judo at her job in India’s Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.
Her work helps support athletes aspiring to make it into India’s Olympic and Asian Games teams by providing equipment to help athletes’ bodies recover. Recently, her work has extended to supporting younger athletes coming out of grass route centres in the Puducherry union district in India’s south.
She enrolled on the FIFA Master course to broaden her understanding of sports governance and build an international network of professionals working within the industry.
Shweta said: “I need to open up my mind to understand how policy is made, how are the mandates created, and especially their implementation not in the European or the American setting but in the back home.
“I want to learn more, specifically with FIFA, about its investment into the women's sport and the way that they've created women's football as something commercially great. It’s something I want to translate to the athletes I work with in India.”
After playing rugby at university, Menna Sedkey became frustrated that Egypt had no women's national team and began lobbying governing bodies what was needed to create one.
She volunteered her time around her job at Dell and eventually was able to secure funding, coaching and opportunities for an Egyptian women’s team thanks to support from World Rugby and the Egyptian Rugby Football Union.
Having secured the funding, Menna took part in Egypt’s first ever tournament – The Arabs Sevens – held in Alexandria. Since then, Egypt has gone on to compete in the Africa Women's Sevens competition.
With a growing demand to play rugby in Egypt, Menna is hoping that the FIFA Master course can help propel the women’s game and, eventually, develop a national team for the full 15-a-side game.
She said: "What I do is that I represent women rugby in general in order to give women opportunities to play and also allow them competition time.
“Right now, I need to understand more how the sports industry actually works.
"I need to understand what actually happens on field, not just what I'm passionate about and what I need to get done. It’s purely a passion project. I’m not a professional, I have a corporate job but if I can come back to Egypt with more knowledge of sport’s governing bodies and infrastructure, I can help grow the game I love even more.
“Ultimately, I want women to play 15s on the international scale.”
The Class of 2027 will join an illustrious list of notable FIFA Master alumni, including, Manchester United FC’s Park Ji-Sung, Japan FA President Tsuneyasu Miyamoto and New Zealand Olympic gold medal rowers, Emma Twigg and Phillip Wilson.
International Centre for Sports History and Culture Director and FIFA Master Co-Scientific Director Professor Matt Taylor, Co-Scientific Director Dr Heather Dichter and Module Coordinator, James Panter will deliver the Humanities of Sport Module of the course here at 冈本视频, in what is the 27th year of the programme.
Posted on Monday 5 October 2026