Last year, five UEFA 'B', two UEFA 'A' and the completed delivery of a UEFA 'Pro' Licence course took place as the demand for elite coaching courses continued to grow.
At the turn of the year, it was announced that the FAI Coach Education Department had broken the significant milestone of having in excess of 1,000 UEFA ‘B’ Licence holders - bringing the total holders of the qualification in Ireland to 1,024. Similarly, at UEFA ‘A’ Licence, they can now boast in excess of 300 holders. As some work still remains at UEFA ‘Pro’ Licence, the FAI Coach Education Department remains hopeful that the current UEFA ‘Pro’ Licence course will yield a further 17 graduates, bringing the total number to 65 licence holders at that level.
FAI Coach Education Manager, Greig Paterson, explained the benefits of having so many coaches at these levels:
“First and foremost, thanks and gratitude must go to those coaches who have sacrificed their own time, and often money, to register, attend and complete the licence courses, which are an enormous undertaking. The courses evolve year on year, with the demands being placed on coaches becoming greater and greater to make the appropriate standards and complete the required work to attain the course competencies. Obviously, the more coaches we have actively working at these levels, the greater impact this will have on the appropriate development of our players.
"Not only that, but in recent years we have added more challenging modules on video analysis, periodisation, coaching pedagogy and self-assessment and development meaning that those graduating in the past while have a more holistic approach to their coaching methodology and can work at clubs or within coaching teams in more than one guise. We firmly believe that this is the correct way in which to approach our education, in order to have the greatest effect on coaches’ improvement, player development and the greater good of the game throughout the country and beyond.
"We now have approximately 1,400 UEFA licence holders at the three different levels, and are currently looking into adopting further UEFA licence courses for Goalkeeping, Futsal and Elite Youth players. This will allow our coaches to greater specialise whilst also having a more appropriate benefit to the players in their charge. We also have to implement a more robust CPD programme, to re-engage with coaches who have UEFA qualifications, so that we can ensure that they are up-skilled and meet the requirement of attaining a minimum of 15 hours accredited CPD every 3 years.
"For the time being, we are also undertaking a huge body of work to align all our current courses to our Player Development Plan, but we’ve announced plans to deliver a further UEFA ‘A’ Licence and UEFA ‘B’ Licence this calendar year (2016).”
Details of the FAI/ UEFA Licence courses for delivery in 2016 can be found at www.fai.ie/coaching with the closing date for the ‘B’ Licence being Wednesday, February 3 and the ‘A’ Licence being Monday, February 1.
Candidates interested must firstly pay the application fee at www.fai.ie/coachedbefore submitting their full application dossier to Warren Bolger (FAI Coach Education Assistant) by the closing dates above.
Courses at all levels will take place throughout the year around the country and can be booked through www.fai.ie/coached
For further information visit the website www.coaching.fai.ie