Thirty participants are currently attending a 38-day CAF C Coaching Course aimed at upgrading their qualifications in line with modern football practices and developments.

The course, hosted by the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) and handled by Elite CAF Instructor Sunday Kayuni, serves as a platform to evaluate coaches and sharpen their skills in the art of coaching.

Speaking when he officially opened the course at Prince Charles hotel in Lusaka, FAZ president Andrew Kamanga told participants that the Association has introduced a coaching school which will offer various training programmes for coaches.

“Our fortunes as a country depend on the calibre of coaches we have and our executive has decided to introduce a coaching school where we are going to have coaching as a professional career,” Kamanga said, adding that the programme will be two and half years.

“Our focus is to develop football countrywide and this is why we have decentralized the management of the game and for the first time, we have got provincial executives in all 10 provinces. We see this as a way we can quickly get back to ensuring that talent identification is identified at the lowest point where there is football.”

Kamanga also observed that specialization of coaches was key in the development of football at grassroots level.

“We need to have coaches who can just focus on developing young players so that by the time they get to senior level, they would have already mastered the basics and are able to compete nationally and internationally,” he said.

FAZ/EDEN University proprietor and lawyer Keith Mweemba, ZANACO defender Ziyo Tembo, former footballers Govenda Simwala, Kennedy Mudenda, Francis Kombe, Josephat Nkhoma and Keegan Phiri are among the notables attending the course.