  Faddeev and Niemi have proposed a reformulation of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory in
terms of new variables, appropriate for describing the theory in its infrared
limit based on the intuitive picture of colour confinement due to monopole
condensation. I generalize their proposal (with some differences) to SU(N)
Yang-Mills theory. The natural variables are $N-1$ mutually commuting traceless
$N\times N$ Hermitian matrices, an element of the maximal torus defined by
these commuting matrices, $N-1$ Abelian gauge fields for the maximal torus
gauge group, and an invariant symmetric two-index tensor on the tangent space
of the maximal torus, adding up to the requisite 2$(N^{2}-1)$ physical degrees
of freedom.
