The work of developing football worldwide is one of the most satisfying jobs that FIFA has been carrying out in all of the confederations for decades. The gap that existed until recently between great and small has now practically disappeared, with former pupils having at least caught up with their masters in terms of skills and knowledge, if not actually having overtaken them. And in many national associations it is not only youth development work that has reaped the benefits of this work.

Years ago, football development followed a random pattern, which involved setting up new competitions and amending the Laws of the Game. But in 1974 Joćo Havelange was elected as the seventh President of FIFA and no sooner had he gained the support of world famous sponsors such as adidas and Coca-Cola than he introduced structured development programmes. Joćo Havelange and his one-time Technical Director, Joseph S. Blatter, often met with scepticism whenever they tried to implement their projects but nowadays FIFA's systematic development work has become one of its major and most enduring activities. Ever since the first world development programme was established in 1975, over 30,000 coaches, players, referees, administrators and sports doctors have taken advantage of development courses organised by FIFA. This activity is now reflected in the good results achieved by the so-called developing countries in FIFA's competitions.

The structure of the first stage of development programmes proved to contain a magic formula. Even in those days, tuition was separated into topics such as administration, training coaches, sports medicine and refereeing, a method that was successfully mirrored in the FUTURO and FUTURO II courses from 1991 to 2000.