Aito Matthews and Maroura Horoi of Papara were the ideal candidates for the Goalkeeper Discovery course offered by the Fédération Tahitienne de Football in December.
The pair are footballers, playing in the senior Papara squad, but they’re also junior coaches with the club.
“I look after the U-7s, and if needed, sometimes I’ll also train the U-11 and U-13 and Aito looks after the U-11 and U-13,” Horoi said.
“I like being a coach because it allows us to share our passion for football with the youth and to try and teach them the rules of life and the rules of the game.”
The passion they have for football and their desire to share that with those who are younger than them, is evident.
But why have these two teenagers, neither of which are goalkeepers, chosen to take part in this very specific course?
Because they identified a gap in goalkeeper coaches at their club, so thought they’d try their chances with the two day course under the tutelage of Laurent Heinis, one of the best instructors for this role in French Polynesia.
“Already with our club Papara, we don’t have any coaches for the goalkeepers and it’s the most important role in a football team. We came to learn what it means to be a goalkeeper coach,” Matthews said.
“We learned a lot; that you have to impose yourself, have a presence and encourage the goalkeeper.”
For his teammate, Maroura Horoi, it was a new experience that he found himself really enjoying.
“The course was excellent, I really liked it. It showed us exactly how difficult it is to be a goalkeeper and to learn how to coach a keeper. It’s a very technical role.”
The course is 16 hours long and provides participants with the tools for organising training sessions for U-11 and U-13.
The course is based around four different themes: :
- The coach, the public and the game
- The coach and the session
- The coach in a situation
- The coach and support
More clearly, the course is a reminder of training procedures seen in previous courses. It integrates warm-ups, analytic and adaptive exercises, and situations where the goalkeeper needs to adapt in response to the moment, and the game.
For Horoi, the two days of discovery was a success.
“If I can, and if I have the time, I’d like to continue in the coaching of goalkeepers. It gave me the desire to return, the desire to learn more things that I can transfer to our youths.”
That’s why Horoi, who now has the Goalkeeper Discovery course under his belt, can now take part in the next goalkeeping course (Perfecting Goalkeeping Coaching) which is scheduled for the 12 and 13 March 2020.