The Ghana Football Association is planning to roll out a Talent Development Programme in the near future to unearth coaches, says President Kurt Okraku.
According to the leader of the country’s football governing body, he outfit has identified key areas within the football fraternity that needs improvement in the immediate and the future.
As part of future plans to improve the game, Mr. Okraku and his association have rolled out several initiatives to identify and nurture talents in various fields. Recently, the FA initiated the first phase of the much-trumpeted Catch Them Young Policy for referees.
Under this project, young boys and girls are identified across the country and trained periodically to become football referees. The more successful trainees will eventually be used as referees for Juvenile football games when their season starts.
The Ghana FA boss in an interview with FootballmadeinGhana.com said there is the need to roll out a similar initiative to unearth young coaches who will take over the technical aspect of the game in the future.
“Coaching is another need area that we have identified. Indeed the Technical Directorate led by the ever hardworking Bernhard Lippert have been at the forefront putting together regional and national coach instructors…bringing back the licenses programmes or training,” “Kurt Okraku said.
“Obviously when you invest in coaches early, when you invest in referees early you will only benefit in a million fold at the end.
“Investing in Coaches at a very younger age will also be an option that we’ll be looking at. In the last few days, the technical Directorate did run a seminar for Coach instructors. We had 18 coach instructors undergoing training.
“Very soon they will be deployed across the country to run the courses for us. This is a firm commitment that we made in the beginning. And we have said that We will bring the training to the doorstep of the people.
”These coaches will go into the regions to run all the coaching licenses courses to ensure that as many people get the needed education in their attempt to be coaches for the future. Yes Catch them Young Coaching may also be an option for us,” he concluded.