The CON­CA­CAF Coach­ing Con­ven­tion is now in the Caribbean and was launched for the first time on Trinidad and To­ba­go shores as the Emerg­ing Elite Coach Ed­u­ca­tor Pro­gram com­menced at the Hilton Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain on March 16.

The Elite Coach Ed­u­ca­tor Pro­gram is a key com­po­nent of CON­CA­CAF’s Coach­ing Con­ven­tion. The Con­ven­tion, launched in March 2022, is a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work in­tend­ed to stan­dard­ise and raise the qual­i­ty of coach ed­u­ca­tion pro­grams across our 41 Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions. By es­tab­lish­ing, im­ple­ment­ing and mon­i­tor­ing min­i­mum stan­dards for coach ed­u­ca­tion.

This cur­rent work­shop in Trinidad and To­ba­go is the first work­shop as part of CON­CA­CAF’s Emerg­ing Elite Coach Ed­u­ca­tor De­vel­op­ment Pro­gram, as stat­ed by CON­CA­CAF’s Foot­ball De­vel­op­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tor Pablo Lind­say.

The Pro­gram seeks to ac­cel­er­ate and fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of emerg­ing coach ed­u­ca­tors through­out the CON­CA­CAF re­gion to di­rect­ly ad­dress the on­go­ing short­age of qual­i­fied coach ed­u­ca­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the A and B Li­cense lev­els. This pro­gram will serve as a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of our Train the Train­er phi­los­o­phy, which seeks to em­pow­er CON­CA­CAF Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions to de­liv­er their own do­mes­tic coach ed­u­ca­tion pro­grams in ac­cor­dance with their own foot­balling de­vel­op­ment and needs. Coach ed­u­ca­tors par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­gram will ben­e­fit from on­go­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and men­tor­ship sup­port in their coach ed­u­ca­tion jour­ney. The work­shop fea­tures coach ed­u­ca­tors from mul­ti­ple Caribbean CON­CA­CAF Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal was brim­ming with pride fol­low­ing the open­ing day of the cur­rent work­shop.

“This augers well for us be­cause it shows that our As­so­ci­a­tion and our coun­try is be­ing recog­nised by CON­CA­CAF as one with the nec­es­sary tools, re­sources and per­son­nel to host these sort of work­shops. Not on­ly will coach ed­u­ca­tors and coach­es from the re­gion ben­e­fit, but al­so our per­son­nel from Trinidad and To­ba­go. We are mov­ing to­wards es­tab­lish­ing a lev­el of re­spect and show­ing our re­source­ful­ness when it comes to stag­ing ac­tiv­i­ties such as this,” Corneal said.

To roll out the Con­ven­tion, CON­CA­CAF has been host­ing Coach Ed­u­ca­tion Ex­changes across the re­gion. CON­CA­CAF host­ed coach­es in Cu­ra­cao from June 17-19, 2022, which fea­tured par­tic­i­pa­tion from Gen­er­al Sec­re­taries, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tors and Heads of Coach Ed­u­ca­tion from the Fed­er­a­tions of Aru­ba, Bonaire, Saint Maarten, Suri­name and host, Cu­ra­cao.

The event marked the fifth in a se­ries of nine Coach Ed­u­ca­tion Ex­changes, with the Con­fed­er­a­tion hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly de­liv­ered sim­i­lar in­ter­ac­tions in Ja­maica, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Pana­ma and St. Lu­cia. To date, a to­tal of 26 of the 41 Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions have par­tic­i­pat­ed

The three-day ex­changes are de­signed to in­tro­duce par­tic­i­pat­ing Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions to the reg­u­la­tions, im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gies and ap­pli­ca­tion process­es for the in­au­gur­al CON­CA­CAF Coach­ing Con­ven­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to CON­CA­CAF Di­rec­tor of De­vel­op­ment, Ja­son Roberts, the CON­CA­CAF Coach­ing Con­ven­tion forms part of a much big­ger plan: “Al­though our col­lec­tive jour­ney is just be­gin­ning, the steps we have al­ready tak­en to­geth­er have weight and are pow­er­ful. We tru­ly be­lieve that in­vest­ing and grow­ing coach ed­u­ca­tion will be the key to un­lock­ing the con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion of our CON­CA­CAF na­tion­al team and re­gion­al club com­pe­ti­tions.”

Fun­da­men­tal­ly, the CON­CA­CAF Coach­ing Con­ven­tion not on­ly seeks to stan­dard­ise and raise the qual­i­ty of coach ed­u­ca­tion across the re­gion but al­so to pro­vide greater op­por­tu­ni­ties for cross-bor­der ac­cess for coach­es through the mu­tu­al recog­ni­tion of qual­i­fi­ca­tions, while pro­mot­ing coach­ing ex­cel­lence as part of the One CON­CA­CAF Phi­los­o­phy.

The TTFA, like the rest of CON­CA­CAF, will aim to fol­low the path­ways be­ing set out by oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions such as UE­FA and Con­mebol. For more than two decades, UE­FA’s Coach­ing Con­ven­tion has had a clear mis­sion: Set­ting high coach ed­u­ca­tion stan­dards to im­prove the qual­i­ty of coach ed­u­ca­tion in all UE­FA mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions, with the aim of de­vel­op­ing bet­ter coach­es and, ul­ti­mate­ly, bet­ter play­ers and the over­all qual­i­ty of the game.

Thanks to stan­dards en­shrined in the Con­ven­tion, there are cur­rent­ly 190,000 coach­es trained and qual­i­fied to UE­FA re­quire­ments, who are prac­tis­ing their pro­fes­sion across Eu­rope and be­yond. CON­CA­CAF and TTFA will aim to lay down a num­ber of es­sen­tial pri­or­i­ties sim­i­lar to UE­FA’s which was launched in 1998. Those in­clude help­ing CON­CA­CAF and the TTFA ful­fil its mis­sion to de­vel­op foot­ball; In­creas­ing the num­ber of qual­i­fied male and fe­male coach­es; Es­tab­lish­ing­CON­CA­CAF and TTFA-en­dorsed coach­ing li­cences across the re­gion; Rais­ing stan­dards to meet ever greater de­mands on coach­es; En­sur­ing com­mon coach­ing stan­dards across CON­CA­CAF ter­ri­to­ry and pro­tect­ing foot­ballers from un­qual­i­fied coach­es

The CON­CA­CAF Coach­ing Con­ven­tion sees the im­por­tance of es­tab­lish­ing the min­i­mum re­quire­ments for CON­CA­CAF Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions, like Trinidad and To­ba­go, to de­liv­er their Coach Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­grams. By align­ing the stan­dards of our Coach Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­gram to the re­quire­ments of the Coach­ing Con­ven­tion, TTFA’s Coach Ed­u­ca­tion cours­es will be recog­nised by CON­CA­CAF across all CON­CA­CAF Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions. This means that once TTFA is an ap­proved mem­ber of the CON­CA­CAF Coach­ing Con­ven­tion, a coach who pos­sess­es a cur­rent and valid TTFA A Li­cence, for ex­am­ple, will be per­mit­ted to coach in any CON­CA­CAF Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion where an A Li­cence is re­quired.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com