The Sunday News
Ngqwele Dube, Sports Correspondent
THE Confederation of African Football is set to upgrade its coaching courses following a review held during the Caf Symposium that was in Morocco last month.
Although the continental football body is yet to announce the changes, sources at Zifa said the halting of all coaching courses that had been going on is a sign of the impending upgrade.
“Caf is cognisant of the need to align its coaching qualifications with those of other continental bodies particularly Uefa hence a decision was made to improve content in the qualifications.
“Changes will be announced in due course despite the fact that all courses that had been going on have been halted,” said the source.
The decision to stop the courses affected a Caf C course that was set to be held in Plumtree by Zifa.
Zifa technical director Wilson Mutekede said he sent all confederations a circular requesting them to stop any courses they were holding with further instruction to follow.
“They only told us to stop the courses but did not give reasons why. They indicated a circular would follow in the next fortnight telling us what we should do next.
“When we attended the symposium in Morocco there were conversations around improving the content of the coaching courses and I think it could be related to that,” he said.
Zifa President Philip Chiyangwa, Mutekede and secretary-general, Joseph Mamutse joined 400 other international football experts for the conference in Rabat. Several recommendations were adopted at Caf’s extraordinary General Assembly held on the sidelines of the symposium and hey include moving the staging of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon from January to June and expanding the participating teams from 16 to 24.
Major changes have also been made to Africa’s Champions League and Confederation Cup tournaments, which will now run from August to May, like Europe’s Champions League, rather than over the course of a calendar year.
The new amendments that were brought to Caf’s statutes also included the reduction of members of standing committees from 19 to 11.
Caf also enlarged its structure, creating a post of 3rd vice-president, a position that went to Faouzi Lekjaa, who retained the post of president of the Finance Committee.
