adminat the just-ended Confederation of African Football’s top-notch A Licence course in Ghana and has sought an urgent indaba with Zifa to clarify the matter.
The inaugural edition of the Caf Instructors’ Course for the ‘A’ License badge ended in Accra on Sunday with participants telling cafonline.com that they had embraced the idea of the licensing of coaches on the continent.
The course ran from July 20-24.
But Zimbabwe’s senior coaches’ instructors – Nelson Matongorere, Gibson Homela and Benedict Moyo – were conspicuous by their absence at this inaugural course, a scenario that Nyoni said, had left Zisca a disappointed lot.
While their peers were breaking new ground in Accra, Matongorere, Homela and Moyo were nowhere near the Ghanaian capital.
Matongorere is in Germany for a Mighty Warriors training camp that began on July 23 and ends on August 6, Homela is understood to be in his hometown in Bulawayo while Moyo, who is also the Zifa board member competitions, is in Guruve where he is conducting a Zisca Level 1 course, which started yesterday.
All three coaches are on the panel of Caf’s instructors.
However, according to reports from Accra, the course in Ghana equipped the instructors with the requisite knowledge and skills for the successful implementation of the License ‘A’ programme – the highest coaching badge.
The five-day course, which brought together elite Caf Instructors from across the continent, discussed topics that included the Evaluation of Practical Sessions, Equivalence Coaching System, Manuals and Contents of “A” License System and Coaching Course Teaching Methodology amongst others.
In his closing remarks Frederick Pappoe, vice-president of the Ghana Football Association described the course as a unique programme in the sense that it served a training purpose for the instructors to conduct the License ‘A’ coaching license.
Pappoe said the five-day course was in line with the vision of putting African football at the highest level whilst expressing conviction that the instructors would help in the building of coaches who can rub shoulders with the rest of the world.
The Ghana FA vice-president urged the coaches to serve as worthy ambassadors in the crusade to get African football to its desired status.
Caf director of football development Abdel Monein Hussein commended the GFA for their role in the successful organisation of the course and reiterated that “the aim of the course is to develop the Instructors for
the elite license (License ‘A’).
“Africa is on the right path as far as the development of coaches is concerned,” Hussein said.
One of the participants, Serame Letsoaka, Technical Director of the South Africa Football Association also commended Caf for affording the instructors the opportunity which he reckoned was a major step towards equating African coaches with the rest of the world.
Former Warriors coach Ben Koufie who is a Caf/Fifa instructor and Tunisian Malouche Belhassen, a Caf instructor and Fifa Technical Consultant conducted the course, which drew about 40 participants from across Africa.
Nyoni was however, yesterday seeing red and felt Zimbabwe ought to have been represented by at least one of its three senior instructors.
The Zisca chairman also blamed Zifa technical director Nelson Matongorere for the absence of local instructors at the Ghana course, alleging that arguing that that his association relied heavily on Matongorere to co-co-ordinate such programmes on behalf of the country.
“We are going to seek an urgent meeting with the Zifa chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze because we feel there is some communication breakdown in the way the TD is operating and co-ordinating coaching programmes for our members.
“We feel the TD (Matongorere) has been letting us down and it is a big disappointment for us that something like this could take place at Caf and we don’t have anyone there.
“As Zisca our access to Caf is not direct, we have to go through the technical director’s office but we have had some challenges in that regard…even our working together with Klaus Dieter Pagels (Zifa’s German technical advisor) is somewhat limited and cannot be effective whenever Matongorere is not there,” Nyoni said.
Nyoni said despite their absence from the Caf A Licence course, his organisation would continue to build the capacities of coaches especially those at grassroots.
“In the last three years or so, we have had rural schools competing highly in such tournaments like the Copa Coca-Cola and this is largely because of the upgrading of coaches by Zisca.
“There are very good young coaches out there in the country and we can unearth more Dhlakamas (Rodwell) if we continue on this path.
“We are happy to see schools like Dewure, Chibi and Pamushana breaking the dominance of such schools as Churchill, Mzilikazi and Prince Edward.
“But we are still thin in terms of senior instructors because the other instructors we have like Maxwell Takaendesa Jongwe and Sammy Mavhenyengwa only deal with the Level 1 courses yet countries like Zambia have a lot of instructors.
“We hope to upgrade such coaches like Taurai Mangwiro who was recently in Germany and Tobias Mudyamabyanje so that they can also conduct some Level 1 courses,” Nyoni said.
Most of the local Premiership and Division One coaches have only done the Caf C-Licence course in the last two years.
Online Reporter