FFS technical director Tunoa Lui is upgrading his own skills through his participation in the OFC B Licence coaching course currently being held at the OFC Academy in Auckland and says the future of football is looking secure with a small group of talented and dedicated coaches rising through the ranks.
The former American Samoa international says throughout his playing career he never had a dedicated coach but instead teammates who would coach the side.
“When I look back at when I started playing I developed by watching games and then trying what I saw for myself,” Lui says.
“Even when I was in the national team representing American Samoa it was always a player taking charge of the coaching – we never had a proper coach who had been through a course.”
He says his personal experience is what is now driving him to grow the world game in Samoa.
“I think the challenge for me now is that I have all this knowledge and it would be nice to share it with the young generation and then direct them through the right path.”
And in his role as technical advisor for the federation, Lui has the opportunity to do just that.
“I’m in charge of all the educational aspects within our federation, and I am also qualified to deliver parts one and two of the D Licence coaching course. So with that objective I run courses for our clubs and also communities to try and identify potential coaches and bring them through the OFC coaching scheme.
“At the moment I’ve run several courses and from those we identified a number of coaches who went on to complete the C Licence with OFC head of coach education Didier Chambaron just last October.
“We just received the results from that course and of the 16 coaches I identified who took part, all of them obtained C Licences – with three of them receiving an advanced pass which enables them to now attend a B Licence course like the one I am currently participating in.”
This is all good news for the country which is constantly battling to attract players, let alone coaches, with rugby monopolising the interest of many aspiring sportspeople.
“At the moment we are addressing football’s popularity in Samoa by focusing on grassroots,” Lui says.
“Rugby is dominant in Samoa because of all the opportunities and advantages that are available to players which make it very difficult for us to compete.
“We also started the OFC Just Play programme in 2010 and it is an on-going initiative that is quite popular in schools and allows us to go to the outlying areas of the country where there are not as many opportunities for kids to be involved with sport.”
He says the next step, with the help of OFC technical advisor and coach mentor Simon Toselli, is to begin setting up Centres of Development and Excellence and eventually a youth academy.
“We have put it in our long-term planning so it is in the pipeline. At the moment our season is running and we will be using it to identify players to start our elite programme.
“We will be looking to bring those players in and provide trainings for them twice, three times a week and that will be our starting point for training players for the national teams.”

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