From December 1-16 last year, Chambaron was joined by UEFA technical instructor Steve Rutter, who is also coach education manager at the English Football Association, in delivering the first ever OFC B Licence coaching course to candidates from nine of the 11 OFC member associations.
During the 16-day course, each participant was assessed four times and given immediate feedback by the instructors to help them improve their training plans and delivery.
Last week, as a continuation of the work which was begun in December, Chambaron stopped in at Pago Pago to evaluate the progress of Football Federation American Samoa (FFAS) technical director and B Licence candidate Ruben Luvu.
“This is a good opportunity for me to see coaches in their environment and to see how the players react to different formats of technical practices — small-sided games or phase of play,” Chambaron said.
The format of each session should be of an advanced and specific level with the ultimate goal of achieving its training plan objectives, and each B Licence aspirant should be actively involved with a senior team so that these sessions can be put into practice regularly.
“All of the coaches need to practice, they have to improve their delivery so that their players can perform well and understand the message faster,” Chambaron said.
“The B Licence is a short term objective OFC has for preparing coaches – with the long term goal of producing top quality players. If we want better players, and when I say players I mean boys and girls, then we must have better coaches.”
Whilst visiting each participating member association throughout the year, Chambaron will provide direction and feedback to help improve and prepare the candidates ahead of their final assessments which will be held towards the end of the year.
Through his role as FFAS technical director, Luvu is involved in the coaching of the American Samoa U-17 and U-20 teams as well as one senior level men’s team which gives him plenty of opportunities to put his newly-acquired knowledge into practice.
Already the work being done in American Samoa has seen some rewards, with the U-17 national team causing a stir at the OFC U-17 Preliminary tournament where they beat eventual victors Cook Islands 3-0 to finish second in the final standings.
While Luvu has the support of Chambaron, he also has another avenue of assistance in the form of OFC coach mentor Simon Toselli.
Toselli is in charge of coaching development in American Samoa, Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga, and will be in American Samoa until 8 March.
For more on American Samoa football go to www.ffas.as

Share