06 Aug 2013

About 30 coaches from different local football leagues are attending a FIFA high level coaching course at Lekidi football centre in Gaborone.

Officially opening the course on Monday, Botswana Football Association vice president finance and marketing, Gabriel Ngele said coaches drove football development and the course was an ideal platform to gather coaches to discuss matters of Botswana football.

Ngele said their collective role was to take football to a higher level which, he said, could be achieved through cascading structures to youth teams. He advised the coaches to work hard throughout the week in order to gain skills that would help them become reputable instructors.

Course instructor, Dr Frederic Millar said football was all about players and further noted that it was the coaches’ role to produce good players. “This is your chance to sharpen your coaching skills, you have been through challenges as coaches and I believe you are still learning new things,” he noted.

The instructor highlighted that BFA needed to have up and running structures that would produce players from grassroots. He said coaches must establish links with primary, secondary schools and youth teams to ensure that Botswana football grew.

He advised BFA to maintain consistency within its leadership structures. “Don’t change chief executive officer and technical director every third and second year, you need a term of stability,” he noted. Dr Millar indicated that Botswana football needes to have decent training facilities and that could be achieved through having good working relation with government and FIFA.

FIFA development officer, Ashford Mamelodi said he believed that the coaches would help the association to solve the Zebras dropping performance by the end of the course. He indicated that with the coaches’ passion towards football, the challenge of youth development would be solved, adding that it was time they joined hands and help BFA in football development issues.

Mamelodi said the fact that Zebras went for the 2012 AFCON;  was an indication that there was talent in Botswana which only needed to be tapped at a young age. “We can’t be a country which only has a national team, where is the coach supposed to pick players who will form the senior team,” he asked. ENDS