COSAFA introducing coaching standards in its tournaments

This was confirmed to SABC Sport by COSAFA Secretary General Sue Destombes, who revealed that this has also been inspired by the work CAF is doing in training coaches. 

In a circular that SABC Sport has seen and was shared with the 14 member associations, only coaches with CAF Pro, A, or B licenses will be allowed to sit on the bench. Destombes revealed that these new regulations will be effective from the COSAFA Cup in Durban from the fifth until the 16th of July.

"After a discussion at our technical and development standing committee and our competitions, they felt quite strongly that one should introduce standards because otherwise, as we heard during the general assembly, comments made by the CAF president but also by certain of our member associations to say, at COSAFA we are doing all of these tournaments but sometimes the return of investment is not there," she said.

Valid sister Confederation licenses (e.g., UEFA Pro, A and B Licenses will be accepted).

The circular goes further to say, only assistant coaches with the CAF Pro, A, B, and C licenses will be allowed to sit on the bench. Destombes says since these are senior national teams, they have reached a stage where they can’t compromise quality.

"What is missing here, I think very much has to do with the training of coaches. Coaching the coaches and making sure that any of the national teams are in the hands of qualified coaches," she added.

"So, we have introduced and we built it into our regulations now. We've sent our circular to all of the teams. As with CAF and the first year of the Champions League, one might allow a little UEFA but the bottom line is this is a senior men's team, whether it's an AFCON team or a CHAN team, it's a senior men's team."