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Collin Matiza Sports Editor
UK-BASED Zimbabwean coach, Phillip Zulu, is planning to bring two top tutors from Brazil to conduct Futsal coaching courses in this country.

Futsal is a ball sport played on a hard court, smaller than a football pitch, and mainly indoors.

It has similarities to five-a-side football.

The game is played between two teams of five players each, one of whom is the goalkeeper, and unlimited substitutions are allowed.

And, after Angola recently established Africa’s first professional Futsal league, Zulu, who is a fundi of five-a-side football, told The Herald he wants Zimbabwe to follow suit.

The project will be conducted in conjunction with ZIFA and the Zimbabwe Soccer Coaches Association.

“We are planning to bring tutors from the Brazilian Futsal national team to conduct Futsal coaching courses in Zimbabwe.

‘’This programme should take place in October once the commitment on the ground is achieved.

“The current national team manager of  the Brazilian Futsal national team has agreed to come to Zimbabwe to conduct a series of coaching courses.

‘’His other colleague, who works with the English Futsal Coach Education Programmes, has also indicated that he wants to come,’’ said Zulu.

He said the German Football Federation have also shown interest in coming to Zimbabwe to run a similar programme for the local coaches.

“We could begin to run all these courses by October month-end, once everything has been organised.

‘’We will enrol C Level aspiring coaches who will undergo an intensive training programme of about eight days.

‘’All coaches and school teachers, who are involved with football coaching, will be eligible to register and participate.

“Then we will have the B Level certificate, which will enrol all the current Caf B certificate holders. This programme covers an intensive 11-day training period.”

Zulu said that he has been in touch with the Berlin Football Federation who have indicated they were willing to invite Zimbabwean coaches for attachments with top clubs in Germany.

The local coaches can spend up to four weeks in Germany where they will visit different clubs to get exposed to various methods of coaching different age-groups from the academy, youths and reserve teams of Under-23 and Under-21.

But the coaches who will travel to Germany have to raise their own resources.

“This programme will also offer coaching sessions to some selected academies, where we can scout for good young talents that could be invited as well for trials abroad in Germany.

“Then the Futsal coaching course programme will be done just after the German programme where the Brazilian coaches will come to Zimbabwe where they will introduce Futsal Level One coaching course.

‘’They will then conduct some coaching sessions with selected players from schools or academies.

“There will be one week for the coaching course and then another one week for the coaching of young players.”

This will be a continuous programme for every year.