Global Fútbol

LaLiga has completed a training programme for 25 Brazilian youth football coaches as part of the first edition of the 'Qualify the Coach' initiative, with this programme being carried out in April in Brazil. These training sessions formed part of the LaLiga Football Schools project, launched in Brazil in 2022 along with Bright Academy.

A group of LaLiga coaches travelled to Brazil to participate in various theoretical and practical sessions that saw the local coaches taught using the training concepts of the LaLiga Methodology. This Methodology brings together many of the elements that have made the youth academies of Spanish clubs some of the best in the world.

The programme included five content modules, two theoretical-practical sessions and three on-field training sessions. Zé Roberto and César Sampaio, who are both former LaLiga players and ambassadors of the initiative, also took part in the course. The objective of the event was to prepare these Brazilian coaches as part of the LaLiga Football Schools Brazil programme.

LaLiga Football Schools Brazil, which started in the country in 2022, is a project that aims to integrate football as a tool for the development and comprehensive training of boys and girls between the ages of six and 17 in schools and educational centres. In Brazil, the project already has six sites, distributed across the regions of São Paulo, Recife and Aracaju, and it is growing rapidly. At this time, there are already more than 550 players training in the educational centres that form part of this programme.

LaLiga Football Schools is one of the cornerstone projects that falls under the umbrella of LaLiga Grassroots, an initiative launched by the entity to promote grassroots football around the world. This is an initiative that is evolving thanks to agreements with local educational centres. The schools involved make football either a part of their academic curriculum or an extracurricular activity, and the sport is practiced following the guidelines of LaLiga, which supervises the project from its headquarters in Madrid through a technical director in the destination country. In addition to Brazil, LaLiga Football Schools is present in Hong Kong, Vietnam and India. The latter was the first country to join the project and, since doing so in 2018, more than 17,000 young footballers have already received coaching.

Juan Florit, the head of the technical and sporting side of LaLiga Grassroots, stated: “LaLiga has trained more than 22,000 local coaches in the LaLiga Methodology in different countries. Programmes such as ‘Train-The-Trainers’ or ‘LaLiga Formation Methodology’ have been organised in countries such as the USA or India and have laid the foundations to continue perfecting this type of training, which includes some educational experiences in Spain for professionals from outside our borders, in which Spanish clubs participate and collaborate. We believe that both the selection and training of coaches is the basis on which we should build our projects, which is why we attach great importance to this.”

Francisco Javier Hernández, the head of international development at LaLiga Grassroots, added: “The central idea of LaLiga Football Schools is the comprehensive education of children, using football as an educational tool, while we want to to enhance the level of the local coaches, through the training provided by LaLiga, and promote interest in Spanish football. Brazil is a country where football is very strong, so there are many synergies and areas of collaboration that will make the project grow even further. In fact, the plan is to open four more sites in the near future.”