BFA gets tough on coaches' qualifications
Kabelo Boranabi | Friday March 8, 2019 12:40
Unveiling the BFA’s four-year plan yesterday in Gaborone, technical director, Serame Letsoaka said the association would put a directive to the clubs that coaches without the required qualifications will not be permitted to coach in the leagues as part of the coaching education programme.
He said this strengthened the level of competition in the elite league thus will be beneficial for the national teams.
“By 2020, all coaches in the Premier League and First Division would be required to have A-diplomas. The BFA will enforce that all the teams hire coaches with these qualifications.
This is done as per CAF requirement hence why the BFA is focused on coach education.
We are equipping these coaches so they can be absorbed by the teams,” he said. Letsoaka further said the BFA has looked deep into the youth development structures. He said they have come up with a coaching syllabus for all the junior coaches around the country. “We have a philosophy that will address how we want to play looking at our strengths and weaknesses. This should match the way we are being coached hence the need to come up with the entire junior coaching.
This was done through consultation with various people,” he said. By the end of the programme, BFA wants to have 10 coaching courses that will produce over 300 coach educators for the junior teams in the country. Letsoaka attributed the dismal performances by the women’s national and the league teams to poor coaching. He said there are programmes in place to equip women coaches. Currently the women’s football does not have many qualified coaches. The women Zebras coach, Goalethoo ‘Ronaldo’ Nkutlwisang remains the most qualified with a CAF C licence. “In terms of women’s football coaching, we have a very serious challenge.
We only have Ronaldo who is doing a C-diploma while there are other two coaches who will be doing the C-diploma.
The girl child does not have as many opportunities as the boys.
One thing I realised is that they are not properly coached while, through my research, I also realised that they only meet on match days without proper training,” he said.