GFF delivers goalkeeping coaching course to boost Academy Training Centres

The Guyana Football Federation (GFF) delivered its end-of-year goalkeeping coaching workshop on Thursday November 25th with intention to further build capacity among regional associations’ coaches and enhance the impact of the GFF’s Academy Training Centre (ATC) programme.
The one-day training session, hosted at the GFF National Training Centre at Providence, EBD, was focused on teaching the methods of goalkeeping fundamentals, and was led by GFF Goalkeeping Coach Eon De Vieira and GFF Coaching Education Officer Lyndon France.
This theoretical and practical workshop was attended by 24 enthusiastic coaches from the GFF’s nine regional associations, who expressed their continued commitment to improving their goalkeeping skills. The workshop included classroom modules on developing goalkeeping practice structures, training techniques and session plans; as well as fieldwork focusing on positioning, types of catches, and distribution.
“This is a very important course as part of the drive the GFF is currently undertaking with respect to getting football growing and coaches and players equipped to be able to move forward in the right direction, come 2022 and beyond,” said De Vieira.
Technical Director Ian Greenwood added, “The main aim is for each of the regional Academy Training Centres to have a specialised goalkeeping coach. We have a couple of very strong goalkeeping coaches with the national teams, and we want to ensure that the Academy Training Centres follow the same structure.”
West Demerara Football Association coach Yonette Hector deemed the course a great opportunity for coaches to take their goalkeeping skills to the next level. “When I go back to my team, I will be able to show them the basics of coaching,” Hector declared.
East Bank Demerara Football Association coach Andre Gibbs added that he attended the session to improve his goalkeeping knowledge, “so in the future I could share my knowledge with the youngsters, and we can all improve Guyana’s football”.
GFF Assistant Technical Director Bryan Joseph said that while participants would not become professional goalkeeping coaches in one session, the year-end course had taught them the fundamentals.
“I hope they return to their respective environments and make an impact, host sessions and seize every opportunity to work on the things they would’ve learned, and develop the players out there,” he said.
The GFF’s ground-breaking ATC programme was launched in 2017, and is the first of its kind in the Caribbean region. The programme is a selective national youth development initiative that gives girls and boys between the ages of 6 and 19 a weekly, structured training curriculum anchored in the GFF’s football philosophy and delivered consistently throughout its nine regional associations.