KATHMANDU, June 28: Two Japanese -- Takeda Chiaki and Gyotoku Koji- who have been observing Nepali football since more than a year, drew a conclusion that there is no short of talents in Nepali players but there is lack of proper instructor and coaching system to sharpen their skills.
It was based on this impression of Chiaki, a technical director (TD) of All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) and Koji, head coach of Nepali national football team, five Nepali coaches were sent to Japan to attend JFA 'C' License Coach Instructor Training.
“Since last year, I have been closely observing Nepali football including the matches of age-groups, clubs and national team and what I found lacking is the shortage of quality instructors,” Takeda had said in an interaction program organized by Japanese Embassy just ahead of the departure of the Nepali coaches to Japan earlier this month.
Under the initiation of Takeda and ANFA, the AFC 'A' license holders Megh Raj KC, Sunil Shrestha, Nabin Neupane, Yam Gurung and Rajendra Tamang were invited to Japan by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Japan Football Association (JFA) for instructor training.
Nepali coaching team which flew to Japan on June 12 alongside Takeda, trained for three days at second division J-League club Shonan Bellmare in Hiratsuka.
“As Takeda and Koji felt that Nepali coaches needed to be further sharpened in order to develop Nepali football at the grassroots, we were invited to Japan to attend the training which became very fruitful for us,” said Megh Raj KC, one of the Nepali coaches who attended the training. “They don't have any doubt on Nepali talents but they felt a need of some improvement on the side of coaches.”
After returning from the training, KC said he realized that Nepali coaches have been giving the same instruction and techniques to the players that they used to apply during their playing career years ago. “And if you haven't learned enough in your playing career, how effectively can you instruct your players after becoming coach? So these were one of the major points we realized during the training,” he added.
Nepali giant Three Star Club's head coach KC, who has spent two decades in coaching, accepts that Nepali football has no proper playing system and philosophy. He also added that the training Nepali coaches attended in Japan would certainly be helpful in instructing Nepali young players and teach them play in proper system.
“They believed that the Japanese model can be suitable for nurturing young Nepali talents given the similarity in physique of Nepali and Japanese people,” further added KC. “Now we want to travel all around the country and share the experience we gained in Japan with the coaches who have been conducting training in local levels.”
KC informed that ANFA is planning to organize interactions in different parts of the country where all the five coaches will share their Japanese training experience.
“We are eager to share our experience with the coaches nurturing young talents, so that the young players can learn Japanese style of playing,” said KC.
Intelligence is must
KC said that the intelligence and the passing vision are the important ingredients that Nepali coaching system is failing to teach to Nepali players. “Japanese players and even small kids are very intelligent and they have good passing vision since their coaching system is very focused on making them intelligent and good passer,” said KC, “In Nepal these things aren't kept as focus point.”
“Positional awareness, receiving the passes, searching the space and making the passes are done by Japanese players in single attempt in short space of time but our players take so much time,” said KC, adding, “Japanese players already plan where to pass the ball unlike Nepali players.”
“All these basic technical aspects are same in all over the world but the thing is how you instruct the players and how they executes after learning. And we have to instruct them these things in effective way which we are failing to do,” further added KC.
“I don't say we five are going to change whole Nepali football but we want to spread the things we learnt in Japan which may bring small changes in coaching style and eventually that will have bigger effect in Nepali football in future,” concluded KC.
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