At the end of June, Malmö became the European city of football when over 250 representatives of club and federation supporters’ groups gathered in the historic Swedish city for the European Football Fans Congress 2025 run by Football Supporters Europe (FSE).

With 50 Supporter Liaison Officers (SLOs) from 20 countries attending their network meeting, this was an ideal opportunity for Geoff Carroll, EOSE’s Skills Development Director, to present the new draft occupational standards for the SLO role which EOSE has patiently researched and developed over 12 months with the support of a technical working group of experienced SLOs from across the continent. 

The standards are part of TPDS (Towards the Professional Development of Supporter Liaison Officers), an EU-funded Erasmus+ Sport project led by FSE. UEFA now requires every professional club to have an SLO who’s overall aim is to improve relationships between the fans and the club/federation, external agencies like the police, and seek to minimise confrontation on matchdays.

Geoff was privileged to be given over an hour to present the SLO’s functions, good practice guidelines, essential knowledge and skills, and field questions from the floor. The audience was delighted to hear about the initiative and eager to learn more. At the close of the session, there was a consensus that the new occupational standards would be extremely valuable in communicating exactly what the role is about to clubs/federations and all those involved in matchday operations. They also felt the standards would be a great tool to aid the recruitment and the onboarding of new SLOs and as a foundation for ongoing training.  All 50 SLOs agreed to study the standards and provide online feedback to finalise the official version for early 2026.

Project progress so far

TPDS is a three-year Erasmus+ sport project, led by Football Supporters Europe (FSE). The consortium gathers EOSE, the German University of Kassel (which was the first institution to offer a higher education certificate for SLOs), the universities of Gdańsk (Poland), Limoges (France) and Malmö (Sweden) and the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) as partners. The engagement of CONMEBOL will test the SLO role and training requirements on a different continent as the first step to rolling out SLOs in professional football across the world.

At present, very few national football associations and leagues offer SLOs advanced training. A large number of SLOs across Europe receive only basic instruction, and many receive none at all. ‘Learning by doing’ is simply not enough and professional training has become a high priority. Innovative educational pathways, based on occupational standards and sustainable provision in higher education, will help to make the football matchday experience safer, more secure and based on higher levels of service for the fans.

EOSE is delighted to be actively involved in this ambitious project and to bring its expertise and innovative approach to the development of occupational standards as well as fit-for-purpose training programmes.

Since the project launch in June 2023, TPDS partners have met four times in-person in Frankfurt, Gdańsk and Malmö (twice) and many more times in interim online planning meetings. TPDS achievements so far include:

  • FSE setting up a Technical Working Group consisting of practising SLOs from professional clubs in eight European leagues to support EOSE in developing occupational standards
  • EOSE developing a functional map and occupational standards
  • The universities of Gdańsk, Limoges and Malmö designing and piloting draft SLO training modules, based on the standards and building on the experience of Kassel.

In the rest of 2025, the project will:

  • Finalise the occupational standards and a handbook for their use
  • Finalise the draft training modules
  • Create a toolkit for the professionalisation of SLOs and roadmap for the South American continent.