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FOR BARCA WITH LOVE . . . Isaac Oriol Guerero Hernandez (second from left) is expected in Zimbabwe next week for a high-profile two-day coaching clinic for Premiership coaches

Grace Chingoma Sports Reporter
head co-ordinator of Barcelona’s football school Isaac Oriol Guerero Hernandez and project co-ordinator Daniel Bigas Alsina are expected in the country next week for a two-day coaching programme to give Premiership coaches a glimpse of how to play the Barca way.
The exchange programme will help the domestic Premiership reap the benefits of a football partnership which was signed last year between the Spanish giants and league sponsors Castle Lager.

Premier Soccer League chief executive Kenny Ndebele urged all the league coaches to attend.

“We are very excited and especially grateful to our sponsor for bringing high-level technical coaches from Barcelona. We would like to urge our coaches to attend and since it is coming after the Caf-A licence, it adds on to knowledge they are acquiring.

“It is our desire as a league to see this relationship grow and, hopefully, one day we will have some of our coaches going to Spain for some training in coaching.

“We looking forward to 100 percent attendance and the days set for the course are convenient and doesn’t disrupt the training programmes for the teams,” said Ndebele.

Castle Lager penned a three-year partnership which made it the official African beer of FC Barcelona in Zimbabwe and 10 other countries on the continent.

The two coaches will also visit Zambia and Tanzania after the Harare leg for a similar programme. Hernandez, who is a holder of a UEFA Pro Licence among other several sports degrees and qualifications, has worked with the club in different professional youth teams from 1994 up to 2010 and, since then, has been the head co-ordinator of the Barcelona football school.

Alsina, who is 37, has featured for the club’s junior teams and lower division sides as a player and once played with players such as Carles Puyol and Xavi Hernandez, two of the best products of La Masia, Barca’s famed academy, which also produced the likes of Gerard Pique, Thiago Motta, Cesc Fabregas, Mikel Arteta, Pedro, Sergio Busquets, Pep Guardiola, Andres Iniesta and, of course, the great Lionel Messi.

He has coached teams such as AE Aiguafreda and, as project co-ordinator for years, has been involved with organising training camps for Barcelona soccer schools in Malaysia and Vietnam in 2012 and Croatia and Japan in 2013.

He has worked with other coaches such as Albert Roca, who was Barcelona’s physical trainer, Dutchman Frank Rijkaard, the Dutchman who spent five years as coach of the Catalan giants from 2003 /2008 and Joan Vilà, a methodology director at the club. The duo is expected to take all the Premiership coaches, their assistants and the club captains through their paces for two days.

On July 28, their programme will start with the two coaches preaching the gospel of the game’s philosophy, physical training and then have some practice sessions.

The following day, the Spaniards will take coaches through a tactical development plan in the conference room before having a practice session later.

The visiting coaches will then connect to Lusaka where they will have a similar programme on July 30 and 31 and then round up their African tour in Tanzania where they will meet with coaches on August 1 and 2.

The programme is being fully sponsored by the league sponsors Delta and all the clubs are expected to attend.

However, various national teams’ coaches and other junior coaches are also expected to attend the workshop.

The coaches are expected to learn from the two experts how the Spanish giants, whose tiki-taka style overwhelmed the opposition for years, turned themselves into the dominant force in European football during a period when they won two European crowns under Guardiola.

That Barcelona team, with Messi as its spearhead, is widely regarded as one of, if not the finest, football team ever assembled in world football.

A number of Premiership coaches have just spent the last two weeks undergoing the Caf A Licence course, the highest qualification a coach can acquire on the continent.

There has been concern that most of the local Premiership coaches are found wanting, when it comes to keeping in touch with the changes that have been sweeping the games and their tactical capacity has, for a long time, been questioned.

Bothwell Mahlengwe, a former Premiership footballer who became the team manager of defunct Division One side La Liga before turning into a columnist for this newspaper, argues that the last tactician, among the local coaches, was Charles Mhlauri who won back-to-back league titles with CAPS United in 2004 and 2005.

Zimbabwe’s representative clubs, on the continent, have struggled in recent years and part of the blame has been directed on the failure by local coaches to impose themselves when it comes to those battles.

When the Barca/Castle Lager partnership was launched in Zimbabwe last year, Delta Beverages marketing director Maxen Karombo said it was going to benefit Castle Lager consumers and FC Barcelona fans in this country through a number of local promotional activities.

He said this partnership would also boost the team’s popularity in the country and on the continent.

The partnership marked the first agreement that Barcelona have entered with an African-based company, and is expected to open the door for Barca fans in Zimbabwe, and other select countries across the continent, to have easier access to their favourite club’s merchandise, memorabilia and the chance to win a trip to travel to Spain to watch the club in action.

Vice President of the Economic and Strategic Area at FC Barcelona, Javier Faus, said they were delighted by the partnership.

“We are delighted with signing this partnership with a world renowned brand such as Castle Lager.

“We identify with Castle Lager which, similar to our club, holds more than 100 years of history and great tradition. We also share with them our passion for football and supporters in a very important market such as Africa,” he said.

The Castle Lager brand has a long-standing involvement in football in Africa, spanning a period of 85 years, and currently sponsors various football leagues in Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Lesotho.

Castle Lager is also a sponsor of two regional football competitions, the Cosafa Cup and the Cecafa Cup.

With European football having gained immense popularity with fans across the African continent, Castle Lager has for many years been the broadcast partner of various football competitions, providing fans with the opportunity to watch televised matches of the European Championships, the Barclays Premier League and the Spanish La Liga.