COMETPlayerRegistration

First registration

“First registration” is used only when a player is entered into the system for the first time, whether he/she is a beginner who recently joined a local youth club or a player who was just recruited from abroad. In order to be certain that a player requires “First registration,” you may wish to do a search of existing players, before beginning with your data entry. Figure below shows the form for entering the first registration, and corresponding menu item on the left.

After filling out the form above, click the "Save" button to create the registration. The initial status of a new registration is set to "ENTERED". A new registration should be confirmed by the responsible person from the responsible authority, depending on the organization's structure and rank, this could be the national federation or a regional association. The next step is to upload all required documents (see below Selection A) upon which the registration is done. The list of required documents will depend on the rules of your federation:

• Copy of Passport
• Copy of ID Card
• Contract
• Medical Report

CFA NOTE: A new registration is first saved with the status ENTERED. After a club referent has finished entering all the relevant information and has uploaded all the required documents, then he or she can "Submit" the registration for review and approval by the National Association. At this point the status of the registration changes to SUBMITTED. Only registrations with status SUBMITTED will be presented on the "Confirm Registrations" console to the appropriate authority of the national association, mainly the Administrator of Players. If the person responsible for reviewing and confirming the registrations finds the data incomplete or incorrect, then he or she can "Return" the registration back to the club. The registration is returned back to the original status ENTERED. A club can later resubmit the registration after the necessary corrections have been made.

Once all necessary documents have been entered, a responsible person controls all the data and uploaded documents and proceeds with confirmation of the registration. To confirm the registration, press the "Edit" button (See image above) and then the "Confirm" button (see image below). A new window for the entry of the reason of status change opens automatically. After entering the reason, press the "Confirm" button in order to terminate the process of confirmation of registration.

From this moment on, the players status is set to CONFIRMED and he/she can be assigned to competitions/matches, etc.

COMET Connect ID

First-time registration

In order to register a new player, please continue to use the “first registration tab” (see Figure 1).

After entering all required data about the person and his/ her registration, the player will need to be confirmed. Upon confirmation, there are several options:

1. There is no potential duplicate identified by the Connect ID Service. Therefore the player status will directly change to “confirmed” and the person will receive a new FIFA ID.
2. There is one (or more) potential duplicate identified by the Connect ID Service. These will display in a new window. At this point, you have three options (see Figure 2):

• Force register: Please use this button only if you are sure none of the displayed potential duplicates are records of the same person. The newly registered person will receive a new FIFA ID and his/ her status will change to “confirmed”.
• Choose: Please use this button if you are sure that the displayed potential duplicate is a record of the same person. This will start the merge process for the this record (see section “merge”).
• Skip: Please use this button only if you urgently need to proceed with confirmation of the player, and there is a duplicate within LATAM cluster or any issue which prevents you to confirm the player. The player status will change to “confirmed” but the person will NOT be registered with the FIFA Connect ID Service at this point.

Merge

If you choose a duplicate for merge, this will open a new dialogue. The column “result” displays the resulting record from the merge. You can manually edit the data, or choose to add data from the duplicate record displayed in the “merging person” column.

1. If the potential duplicate comes from a federation outside of LATAM cluster, you will be able to proceed directly with the merge, and the person will receive a new FIFA ID and his/ her status will change to “confirmed”.
2. If the potential duplicate comes from another federation within LATAM cluster, the merge process involving the other federation is started. Once ready, you can submit the data to the other federation via clicking on “ask for confirmation” (see Figure 3). Player status will not move to “confirmed” until confirmed by the other federation. If the other federation is not responding but you urgently need to confirm the player, you can still delete the merge request (see section “Canceling open merge requests”).

Confirmation of Merge (“confirm merges” tab)

If another federation starts the merge process for a person already registered within your federation, this will show up in the “confirm merges” tab (see Figure 4).

Please open this tab to see the list of requests and click on the specific person entry to review the merge request. The column “result” displays the resulting record from the merge. You can manually edit the data, or choose to add data from the duplicate record displayed in the “merging person” column.

1. If you agree that the two records are concerning the same person, but want to do some changes to the resulting record (e.g. add additional registrations to the player passport), you can do these changes and then ask for “reconfirmation” (see Figure 5) of the other involved federation.

1. If you agree with the result of the merge and do not wish to make any changes, you can confirm the merge by clicking on “approve” (see Figure 6).
2. If you do NOT agree with the merge at all (You don’t agree that this is the same person), you can reject the request by clicking on “reject” (see Figure 6).

Canceling open merge requests (FIFA Connect ID tab – “Pending”)

If you either come to the conclusion that a merge request was wrong (e.g. the two concerned records are not records of the same person) or the other federation is not responding to your merge request but you urgently need to proceed with confirmation of a player, you can go to “FIFA Connect ID” tab and open the “pending” tab. This will list all merge requests pending with other federations. You can cancel a merge request by clicking on the “delete” button next each pending request (see Figure 7).

If you open the concerned person record afterwards, you will be able to confirm the player (see section “First-time registration”).

FIFA Connect ID tab – “To do”

Any person records for that one of the following points is true will show up in the FIFA Connect ID tab under “To do” (see Figure 8): - The record has been confirmed by a COMET user that that does not have right to use FIFA Connect ID functionality/ merge functionality. - Upon display of potential duplicates, the “skip” button has been used. - This record was an existing record within COMET database, and upon automated import of this record to FIFA Connect ID, a potential duplicate was identified. In order to register these records with the FIFA Connect ID, please open each record one by one. This will open the same process/ window as under point 2) of section “first-time registration”.

Search players

The “Search players” function is used for searching through the database of registered players in the system. If a player was registered in COMET at some point, you will be able to find him/her through this function. Menu item “Search players” will call up an empty search form, similar to “First registration” form, to enter search criteria (see below).

For example, after entering “Recoba” as last name and pressing the “Search” button you will get a list of all players with last name “Recoba” (see below).

Note:The last column in the list shows the Club where the player is actively registered. If this field is empty, then the listed player does not have an active registration. That means that the player is available for registration.

Remember that it is possible to search using one or more fields on the form, in which case search criteria is combined. Also note that you can use the wildcard character ( * ) when searching in text fields. For example, if you enter “Re*a” for the last name, the search results will show all players with last names starting with “Re” and ending with “a”.

View player

Clicking on a Player in the data list showing your search results will bring up all details about that player and his/her registration (example above). There is a fair amount of detail available for each player, so the information is distributed over several tabs. Notice the layout of the information: top section displays basic identification data, whereas all other information is added below, including player’s registration and contract details.

Editing a player and entering additional information

By clicking on the “Edit” button, the fields on the form become editable and you can change or add information about the chosen player. Typically, during the first registration process the user fills out only required information. At some point it may become necessary to modify existing data or add more information. You can use the fields provided on the “Additional information” tab and “Custom attributes” tab. “Additional information” tab keeps the following data about the player:

• additional personal documents
• position on the field
• knowledge of languages
• physical characteristics (height, weight, clothing size, etc.)
• personal information

Changing players position

If you need to change a position of a player, once the first registration has already been created, click the "Additional information" tab and then the button with the pencil icon.

Now select from the drop down list a new desired position (new type), insert a date "from" and press the "Save" button.

The changes are immediately stored and visible in the system. The information on the tab labeled “Custom attributes” varies from country to country and the administrator is responsible for creating the custom fields that you need to enter. The section that follows explains in more detail.

Administering custom fields*

This is an advanced admin functionality that applies only to system administrators.

Initially, there are no custom attributes shown in the system. However, system administrators can define additional custom information that will be stored about each player. These fields can be of different data types: one line text, multiple line text, number or date. The system will make required data validation based on the definition of the field (see image above). Note: Custom fields are only defined once and they apply to all players in the national association.

Registration of an available player

Available player is a player who does not have an active registration. That means that he/she is currently not a member of any club. This essentially means that the previous registration was terminated or has expired. After finding the player in the system, you can register the player by clicking on “New registration” (see below).

In this case registration process is the same as for first registration. Just fill in and submit the data and then wait for confirmation from the responsible person from the responsible authority.

Confirming a registration

If you are the person responsible for confirmation of new registrations, please follow these steps:

1. on the left menu, go to „Players“ and click to „Confirm registrations“
2. the system automatically generates a list of players awaiting confirmation in your region
3. click to select the first player; this action opens player's details for your review
4. inspect all uploaded documents and verify that the information is complete
5. if complete, click to „Edit“ the active registration (see Selection A)
6. then click to „Confirm“ and the confirmation is completed (see Selection B)

Once the registration is confirmed, the status of the registration changes in the system and this action is logged in player's history. If the information entered in the system is not complete or for some reason not satisfactory, you may choose not to confirm the registration. In that case, please notify the appropriate club official explaining your reasons.

Terminating a registration

This action is performed when, for some reason, the club wants to terminate registration of a player. In order to complete the termination, it is necessary to enter the date of termination and the reason for the termination.

Once the registration is terminated, the player is available for a new registration. Registration can be terminated only after the active contract is already terminated. (See Contract termination)

Typical reasons for the termination of player's registration:

• National transfer
• International transfer
• End of career (Retired)
• Automatic – for registration that are automatically terminated by the system

National team registrations

National team registration functionality was allowing single registration of person per person type, but in some countries same persons are national team members in different sports (football, futsal, beach soccer). That's why there was a need to change the national team functionality and allow creation of multiple national team registrations in different sports. Furthermore, users should be able to define national team photo separate from their normal registration photo (e.g. photo in club jersey should appear for a club registration and photo in a national team shirt should appear for a national team registration).

Changes in person profile screen

Functionality of creating national team registration with a button "National team" stays as it is, but instead of popping out a dialog for selecting discipline and showing single national team registration information on person profile screen, the system now shows "National team" tab with fields for creating national team registration. "National team" tab is shown on screen only if person has a national team registration of particular person type or if creation of national team registration is requested. This is due to most persons not being involved with national team hence the national team tab is hidden for them.

It is now more transparent for user which national team is selected for national team registration as for player this is determined by person's nationality. Saving new national team registration makes it immediately CONFIRMED.

Information on national team registration is removed from person's profile, but the input fields are still kept in search mode to allow searching of national team registered persons.

Creating multi-discipline national team registrations

Just like with normal registrations, person may have multiple national team registrations (for different sports). There is "New registration" button which under "National team" tab allows creation of new national team registration.

It is not allowed to create multiple registrations in same discipline with overlapping dates and message will warn user about it:

National team photos

Person photo is uploaded to person's documents and registration photo is uploaded to registration's documents.

• If photo should be fetched for person, the system fetches the last active person photo
• If photo should be fetched for registration, the system tries to fetch the last active registration photo and if it does not exist, the system fetches the last active person photo

The photo is fetched based on registration wherever it is possible to do so (printing id card, printing match start list, adding match events to match role, page for registration details on scanning qr code of id card and many more). Mostly the photos are connected to person since at the time there wasn't possibility to upload photo to registration and that's why we have to show person photo if registration photo does not exist so photo would appear properly as before. Using person photo for registration is emphasized on person's profile screen with information icon.

Photo uploaded to registration does not show information icon.

Since registration photo is now separated from person, there are buttons to capture/crop/rotate registration photo which work the same as for person photo. Buttons are visible in registration's edit mode.

History contains national team registrations

Now that person may have multiple national team registrations and user may even terminate national team registration and create a new one, there is a need to show history of national team registrations. That's why we have added new section named "National team" in person's history:

Terminating national team registration

Even if there are some statuses in between CONFIRMED and TERMINATED, we are overriding the status change and make the national team registration TERMINATED (skipping status transition action for authorization and using old action for authorization without a need to update permissions):

Retroactive registration

Once you start actively using the system in production, you may notice that some of the historical information about players and their previous registrations is missing. In order to input this type of historical data, you can use the “Retro registration” feature of your Comet system, which is available on the History tab. When you click on the “Retro registration” button, a new input screen appears where you may enter details of a previously expired or terminated registration. You are required to enter the start and end date of the registration, select the club, its parent association, etc. The status of this registration is automatically set to TERMINATED and this action is logged in player's history.

Note: The most common reason for entering retroactive registrations is to make the information available for player passport.

Player passport

According to FIFA regulations, when a player is being transferred to another club, the original association needs to provide the new club with the player passport. “The registering association is obliged to provide the club with which the player is registered with a player passport containing the relevant details of the player. The player passport shall indicate the club(s) with which the player has been registered since the season of his 12th birthday. If a birthday falls between seasons, the player passport shall indicate the club with which he was registered during the season following his birthday. “ Player passport is essentially a report that will be generated by Comet upon user request and it includes the complete history of player’s registrations (that have been entered in the system). Player passport can be accessed and printed from the History tab inside the Player record.