Indian coaches hail FIFA course as platform to evolve

Several Indian 'A' licensed coaches, who attended a five-day FIFA elite course which ended here on Monday, hailed the programme as a platform to evolve and adapt with the changing scenarios in world football.

A total of 31 coaches, including Mohun Bagan's I-League winning coach Sanjoy Sen, Armando Colaco, Derrick Pereira, Thangboi Singto, Santosh Kashyap and Savio Medeira, attended the course.

"Every coach has to evolve with every passing game. And the inability to do so will render you from winning matches. We must adapt with the ever changing scenarios in world football and this course has enabled us to do just that," said Sen.

"It is imperative for coaches to learn, from anything and everything in the footballing cosmology. Coaches are like teachers, and the common dividend amongst both is knowledge. If knowledge is absent, both will perish," he added.

The course acted as a feeder of modern day elite coaching in club football, which included topics like tactics, system and philosophies. The course also acted as a platform to brush up some of the fundamentals of the game, whilst acting as a catalyst to the evolving breed of Indian coaches.

This year's course was conducted by Jochen Figge from Germany, who besides being a FIFA instructor is also a technical member of the German Football Association (DFB).

I-league club Royal Wahingdoh's coach Santosh Kashyap, who navigated the Shillong based team to a third place in their first I-league season, elucidated the importance of the course.

"Courses such as these help you a lot, as they tend to evolve you as a coach and also brush up some of the important fundamentals that sometimes you oversee," he said in a release, adding: "Also this gives us an opportunity to learn from some of the best in the business and adapt likewise."

His sentiments were echoed by his fellow Indian coaches Armando Colaco, Savio Medeira and others.

The list of coaches who attended the course:

Derrick Pereira, Mariano Dias, Mario Soares, Anthony Levino Pereira, Mateus Costa, Norbert Gonsalves, Mahesh Lotlicar, Sanjoy Sen, Sankarlal Chakraborty, Santosh Kashyap, Stanley Rozario, Satyabrata Bhowmick, Thangboi Singto, Oscar Bruzon, Vivek Nagul, Shakti Chauhan, Abhijoy Basu, Surinder Singh, Priya PV, Chitra Gangadharan, Godfred Periera, Armando Colaco, Tarun Roy, Caetano Pinho, Savio Medeira, Goutam Ghosh, Sajid Yousuf, Hilal Rasool, Ananta Ghosh, Sujit Chakraborty, Gift Raikhan.