UEFA coach education: Overview
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Coach development is fundamental to keeping European football at the top of the global game.
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Developing more and better coaches is a key part of UEFA’s 2024-2030 strategy. Coaches will play a key part of achieving our aim of providing more players, from grassroots to elite, the opportunity to play the game in a safe, fun and positive environment. To do so, we want to improve coaching standards and ensure that European football is at the forefront of coach education excellence.
Our commitments for 2030 include:
- Increasing the number of licensed coaches
- Co-operating with associations to strengthen the coaching landscape, pushing for higher standards and more licensed male and female coaches
- Developing, supporting and providing educational opportunities for coaches – both paid and volunteer
- Creating and improving dedicated initiatives to enhance the pathways of coaches in every association
Our goals for 2030 include:
- For all 55 national associations to be members of the UEFA Coaching Convention
- To increase the number of coaches and educators in place at all our national associations through comprehensive development programmes
- To grow the numbers of girls and women coaching across Europe
- UEFA’s coach education programme: a focus on specialisms
- There are many types of coaches working in the game – both paid and volunteer – all who work in different contexts and cultures and facing unique challenges. We aim to provide specialist support to as many of our coaching community as possible.
We are committed to:
- enhancing our educational pathway in the specialist areas of futsal, youth, fitness and goalkeeper coaching
- improving the quality and number of coach educators
- improving the quality and increase the number of qualified female coaches
UEFA’s coach education programme: reality-based learning
Our coach education programme is built around a reality-based learning philosophy focusing on the participant’s own unique experience linked to their context and culture and emphasizes learner-centered methods. During our courses we encourage participants to share their day-to-day realities to ensure theoretical and classroom-based content links directly to their experience on the football pitch.
Our courses encourage a range of learning methods and environments including:
- Residential workshops, courses and meetings
- Online teaching and webinars
- Club-based practical work
- Club micro-group meetings
- Assignments
- Case studies/research
- Formative and summative assessment
“I fully recommend that all coaches, even former top players, follow the full coach education pathway. It will definitely help them cope with the demands of the game.”