JEDDAH: Ever since I was a child I have always enjoyed football. In fact, I was a standout player in my class when I was in the elementary school in Virginia, United States. So when my sister Lina arranged a football coaching course for me in the Netherlands I jumped at the chance.
The Royal Netherlands Football Association’s football academy conducted the course toward the end of August. I was in the Netherlands for 10 days.
They trained me how to become a football coach along with 27 others that enrolled in the course.
Some of them took the course for the first time. They come from different parts of the world — India, United States, Qatar, Zambia, Nigeria, Morocco, Japan, Mexico, England, South Africa, Gambia, Portugal, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Iceland, and Saudi Arabia.
Our instructors taught us the ways of playing football so that we can execute it during practice sessions.
We also did match analyzes and attended Dutch League games.
We were distributed in different training clusters. These were offense, defense, midfield, and goalkeeping.
We observed how Dutch clubs practice in particular Ajax and Vitesse. We also met a coach from one of the clubs in the Dutch League and he fielded questions about training methods. Coach Hans Westerhof from the Vitesse club was telling us how he trains his players in his practice to get them prepared for the match. Vitesse team plays using the 1-4-3-3 formation. We were there when Vittesse played against PSV Eindhoven.
During one of our sessions the instructors were telling us what we should focus on during the match, with special emphasis on what the players are doing on the football field. It was interesting for me to know what each group is learning while we are doing the match analyzes during the match. So each group did a presentation on what they were focusing on, what they picked up from the match, in the classroom, and from each other in the group. We were also made to demonstrate the coaching techniques we learned on the football field.
We went on a guided tour of the Ajax football academy and there we observed for a few minutes how Ajax’s under 20 team practice.
Also, our instructor drove home the point about the importance of conditioning. He told us a proper football player should be fit, in good shape and maintain his health and that he should be conscious of the proper food to have. A good footballer should always have good stamina to survive the demands of the game of football at any level.
One of the privileges of attending such a course is that I got the chance to meet famous football players that were also training to become coaches as well. The people that I met were Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Kluivert, George Finidi, and the famous Holland national coach Marco Van Basten.
When I saw them I could not believe they were also trained as coaches.
To me it was like a dream come true. This was the first time I took this course and I was really happy that I was able to do this course. I am now a certified football coach and looking forward to seriously consider a coaching career.
It was really a good experience and I have learned a lot of valuable skills. I will never forget it.
