Jerome Perlemuter has been appointed as the General Secretary of the World Leagues Forum, an organisation of professional football leagues that the Kenyan Premier League is a member of.

The Frenchman has been head of the Legal Affairs and International Relations of the French Professional Football League for the last 12 years and has extensive knowledge of the legal environment in football, and its business.

Perlemuter has also been serving as a Judge of the Paris Commercial Court for the last two years, where he focuses on competition law litigations.

He will begin his work as World Leagues Forum General Secretary on 1 April 2017 and will primarily be based in Zürich where WLF will have an office.

The objectives of the World League Forum are:

  1. To develop modern, effective governance structures within world football that respect football national bodies’ role and recognise the role professional leagues and their member clubs can play.
  2. To foster cooperation between the Leagues and their member clubs through knowledge sharing and exchange of best practices with an emphasis on helping the emerging leagues in their development.
  3. Represent the Leagues and their member clubs on all matters of common interest towards sport and political institutions.

 

Membership is open top tier national leagues that have a legal structure and statutes of their own. The leagues must also be financially independent, and have and administration structure with a dedicated board.

Kenyan Premier League joined WLF in 2015.

KPL Chief Executive Officer Jack Oguda said the KPL looked forward to learning best world practices from the best leagues in the world through WLF that would help professionalize the running of the game in Kenya.

The WLF’s mission is “to be the voice of the leagues and their member clubs at the world level and the interlocutor of FIFA for all matters relating to professional football”.

The WLF has meanwhile been allocated four slots in the new FIFA Professional Football Stakeholders Committee (FSC). This follows a ratification of the composition of the FSC at the FIFA Council held in January.

The WLF representatives are Bobby Barnes (Premier League), Christian Seifert (Bundesliga), Mitsuru Murai (J.League) and Claudius Schafer (Swiss Football League).

The Chair of the Committee will be Victor Montagliani, President of CONCACAF and a Vice President of FIFA. Deputy Chair will be Evelina Christillin, the UEFA female representative on the FIFA Council.