The scheme was introduced last year and numerous ‘D’ and ‘C’ Licence courses, the first steps on the pathway, have since been run across the Pacific. Under the guidance of technical director Patrick Jacquemet and Didier Chambaron, the head of OFC’s education and training programme, OFC is now looking to introduce the ‘B’ and ‘A’ Licences and Rutter is providing his assistance in the development of this part of the programme.
oceaniafootball.com sat down with the former Yeovil Town player-manager to talk about what he can bring to the OFC coaching accreditation scheme and its chances of being successfully implemented.
How did you end up visiting OFC and what is your role in terms of contributing to the coaching pathway?
Didier got in touch with UEFA about the possibility of someone coming to Oceania when he went to one of the conventions in Brussels and was talking about OFC developing their own coaching programme. They obviously wanted to design something specific for the OFC region but it’s quite daunting to sit down and try to design a syllabus from scratch. I’ve spent three days with Didier and what we’ve been trying to do is utilise some existing materials that are UEFA-approved and modify them into a format that suits OFC. So it’s a case of balancing up what’s existing with what Didier knows are the differences between Oceania and European football and trying to bridge those gaps in a seamless way. We’ve come up with a programme for December which will be the pilot course for the ‘B’ Licence. From there, we’ll have a chance to review that and modify it for next year.
This is your first trip to Oceania, was it hard to give advice on coaching in the Pacific given you have little knowledge or experience of the region?
It’s been more about raising points and letting Didier come up with the answers because he knows a lot more about football in these parts obviously. A few years ago, a friend of mine was the national coach of the Solomon Islands, a guy called Alan Gillett. He took them to the final play-off game for the 2006 World Cup against Australia and he’s still lauded in the Solomon Islands apparently. So I spoke to him a little bit about it because obviously there are some cultural and geographical issues that are unique to OFC. So I came with some information and, really, my job wasn’t to tell Didier what to do, it was more to say, ‘This is what we do, what bits can you take and how can I help you in-bed that into your programme?’ Didier is the one with the local knowledge and obviously him and Patrick are going to have the final say, which is how it should be.
From what you have seen and heard, do you believe this programme can be a success in Oceania?
Yes, definitely. Didier is absolutely fantastic, he seems so committed to what he is doing and is really switched on about the philosophy of how he wants to develop coaches. There’s lots of factors though, there’s geographical and financial considerations and constraints. And in some of the places that OFC covers, football isn’t even the main sport. It’s a bit more like America than England because in America the papers are all full of baseball and basketball and there’s half a page of football, or soccer as they call it. Here, it’s the same, whereas in Europe everywhere you go it’s football, football, football. So there’s a cultural obstacle to be overcome but the programmes OFC is putting in place and what they are trying to engender in the coaches can’t fail to be a success to be honest. It will make them better in whatever environments they end up coaching in and, as a coach educator, that’s the best you can hope for.
Does your involvement with OFC end now or will you be back to help implement the programme?
I’ll be coming back in December to deliver the course with Didier. We’ll work together for the first one and I imagine that from then onwards it will just roll on and develop and, with a bit of luck, I’ll come back every now and again to see how it’s going.
How similar is the OFC coaching pathway to those in UEFA and other parts of the world?
It’s very similar and so are most of the other ones around the world really. Most start with lower level courses that are shorter in duration and obviously the content is less involved. Those are for people who might be mums and dads who run Sunday teams for their kids. But as you go up and coaching becomes more professional then obviously you have to get into the subject matter in greater depth and that’s the same all over the world. Whether you go to Europe or America, all the courses build on an incremental scale. In Europe, there’s 53 countries and every model is slightly different but the principles are all very similar.
Both UEFA and the English FA have a strong relationship with OFC and other organisations in less-developed footballing regions. How important is it to foster such partnerships and what benefit do you think it brings?
We’re quite lucky in Europe because that’s where all the money is, that’s where all the television rights are and that’s where the UEFA Champions League is. Everyone wants to watch European football and so it’s the most economically viable confederation in the world. And so UEFA feels it has a duty, for want of a better phrase, to support others who aren’t in quite the same situation. In the Premier League alone, we have over 50 different nationalities playing, including Australians and New Zealanders and I’m sure there will be some Pacific Islanders in the not-too-distant future as well. So it is a global game and UEFA just happens to be the lucky ones at this moment in time. From the FA’s point of view, we’ve always had a programme in Oceania through memorandums of understanding with certain countries, particularly the Solomon Islands. I know we’ve also had people come out here recently to run women’s programmes. We’ve had these partnerships in Africa, the Caribbean and Oceania for a long time and I think it’s great. People think it’s a bit altruistic but it isn’t in a way because us being able to send our coaches somewhere like the Solomon Islands or Tonga to do a coaching course is a huge challenge for them, just to deal with the cultural things, the social issues and all that. It makes them better coaches so when they come back to us we get a better product. It’s great to be able to help in other parts of the world but we get a lot out of it as well and I think people lose sight of that sometimes.

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