FRF competition management

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FRF competition management

Engineering Insights & Web Platforms

As part of an effort to meet UEFA guidelines in football competition management, the Romanian FA started an initiative to have a full-featured management solution. Initially built in Java (Hibernate/Spring) and Flex we migrated it in 2008 to a Symfony-based solution that has been continuously updated since then. Although a fine solution at one point, the Flex grew and as it was not modular thought out it became difficult to maintain it.

The solution maintains major leagues (1,2,3), youth and feminine competition data including the official referee delegations. The system allows generating games based on specific combinations (Bergers). Data is displayed on the official websites: frf.ro and frf-cca.ro (the referee’s website). Along with several listings and exports the systems provide features such as SMS or email notifications for referees, account info that allows referees and observers to fill in their personal data, availability, online referee reports, and much more.

A FoxPro-based solution that was used to maintain player history and memberships was migrated to the solution allowing much more flexible management for player club membership. The database has now over 35.000 registered players since 1960.

The technical solution extensively uses Symfony admin generator, built-in caching information such as competition rankings. Symfony proved to be a very flexible solution with great features for data migration between application versions.

Future plans include registered club access to player information and also an automatic online transfer system. The goal is to have a complete and automated solution that allows all participants in the game to fill in their reports electronically (clubs, referees, observers, FA members).