Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Ho Chi Minh City: Head coaches from countries across east Asia and Asean are getting prepped up for the AFC U-14 Girls’ Festival of Football through a workshop held at Thanh Long Sports Centre in the Vietnamese city here
The workshop conducted by AFC Festival Project Manager Dr. Shamil Kamil aims at giving the participating teams’ head coaches the idea of how to effectively manage the team and help their young players get both the enjoyment of football and skill development during the festival.
“The purpose of the workshop is to help the coaches understand the objectives of the festival, update information about coaching and enhance the communication between coaches,” he said on Monday.
Dr. Kamil used a modern teaching method that encouraged the coaches to give their opinions about the topic before he gave them the information.
But there were language barrier problems which prevented some participants from expressing their ideas clearly or acquiring the knowledge by themselves.
“The language barrier is a problem in the classroom but we group the participants accordingly to solve the problem and maximise the knowledge the participants can get from the course,” said Kamil, who is from Iraq.
Participants were also provided with detailed materials on football and player development.
Cambodia’s head coach Samuel Schweingruber, from Switzerland, said that it was the first time Cambodia attended the festival, so the workshop was a good chance for the coaches to exchange information about coaching and football development.
“Participating in the course is useful in that I can talk with the other coaches from other countries like Chiense Taipei and the Philippines. It also helps me understand the ideas, philosophy and the long-term plans as well as the different stages of the AFC’s women’s football development programme,” said Schweingruber.
Guam’s head coach, Kristin Thompson, who attended last year’s festival in Vietnam, said the workshop helped the coaches to understand the objective of the festival so they could tell their teams why they came to the annual event.
Chinese Taipei’s Hsu Ching-Hsin, who is both a physical education teacher and football coach, said the workshop helped her to understand the difference between a festival and a competition.
“In Chinese Taipei, people only focus on winning but football is not just winning or losing, but also fun and skills development, communication and many other things,” said Hsu, who hoped Chinese Taipei paid more attention to women’s football and wanted to have a professional women’s football competition like Vietnam.