FIFA holds coach instructors’ course

MASERU – The Lesotho Football Association (LEFA) with FIFA is hosting a five-day Coach Instructors’ course at the association’s Bambatha Tšita Sports Arena headquarters. The course, which is led by FIFA Technical Expert Zunaid Mall from South Africa started on Monday and will end tomorrow.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Mall said the aim is to capacitate local football educators and up-skill them.

The course is being attended by some of the most experienced and well-known coaches in the country including the national Under-20 head coach Bafokeng Mohapi, the women’s national Under-20 coach Elizabeth Yelimala and other national team coaches.

At club level Lesotho Defence Force’s (LDF) Motheo Mohapi, Lesotho Mounted Police Service’s (LMPS) Seephephe Matete and former Bantu coach Bob Mafoso are among the experienced coaches attending the course.

“The FIFA coaching programme is about the empowering, capacitating and up-skilling of local coaches, as the (LEFA technical director Leslie Notši) has already mentioned that CAF Licensing will be opening and that the licensing and the programming will basically be giving out all your information to the coaches that will be working with you,” Mall said.

“You are the local experts, we will be sharing with you this information all the time to be able to ensure that we grow coaching capacity in the Kingdom of Lesotho,” he added.

Mall continued: “You as local people, FIFA and CAF have taken it upon themselves that they will not be sending out coaches and doing many more coaching courses. You as the local FIFA will ensure that we will be able to take everybody sitting in this room to the next level as coaches’ educators and from there as we go forward you will see exactly where you as educators will be able to go in terms of your pathway and timeline.”

Speaking at the opening of the course, LEFA’s secretary general, Mokhosi Mohapi, said he hopes the coaches will grab the opportunity to enhance themselves from the first training that was facilitated by CAF and make the report much better.

He said the coaches in attendance should be able to host football discussions on their own and only bring experts to enhance their knowledge and help where they are lacking.

“We need not bring Zunaid, we need to do it without him,” Mohapi said.

“Discuss, and when we think we can’t discuss any more, (we can) invite him to bring in other stuff that we might not be aware of and then enhance our discussion and our growth as a football nation. I know you went through the CAF one, I hope that you are going to build from what you did last time,” Mohapi said.

“We should set objectives today and ensure that all of us are above that standard we want to get to.”

Tlalane Phahla