2018-02-05Staff Report 2 Staff Reporter Windhoek-Former Brave Gladiators head coach Jacque Shipanga recently attended a FIFA technical experts’ workshop in Doha, Qatar, where she exchanged experiences with fellow football experts in various areas of football from across the world. The workshop started on January 30 and ended on Friday, and Shipanga was the only representative from Namibia, alongside other international experts such as women football technical consultants, confederations’ technical directors, coaching instructors, representatives of elite football, the grassroots, and youth football experts. The course was led by FIFA technical director Steven Martens and the FIFA head of technical development services, Jurg Nepfer. The seminar aimed at highly informing the participants on the new strategies and philosophy towards boosting the technical capacity of their FAs, enlightening them on the new updates and overview of the new FIFA structure, as well as its technical development set-up, and also looking at the roles and responsibilities of FIFA experts and instructors. It also focused on discussing the development programme ‘Forward’, which according to FIFA.com is a step change for global football development. For the sake of sport and the vision of it reaching its potential in every nation without barriers, the programme intends to improve the way associations develop and support football across the globe. Shipanga says Namibian women’s football will once again benefit from FIFA academy pilot programmes, thereby leading to an enhancement in the development of women’s football at youth level, while simultaneously strengthening the existing developmental structures such as the NFA Girls Centre. 2018-02-05Staff Report 2
