Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2023

/40 It’s really important to have a safe environment and it made me think of the players today and coaching. When I moved to Qatar in an elite environment like Aspire, It can be daunting, so you can imagine how the players feel when they come into this type of environment. We are fortunate as adults that we have the peers that we work with. We have an elite program, and we have a support network. And I think looking back, the challenge was having that safe environment aroundme, whichwas my family. That’s been consistent when I went to Aspire and then moving to a club within Qatar, I had that support, which gave me the confidence to deal with diversity and to be integrated into the culture. I think diversity and the world is becoming smaller. So the challenge for coaches now, and for coach educators is the next generation of player or child is the more curious. They crave instant feedback. They ask more and better questions. They will challenge you as a coach or as a teacher. For me this is the forward way of thinking, which Ivan Bravo spoke about this morning. It’s focusing on what you don’t know in the future to better prepare the generation of players. My challenge is to train the next generation of coaches to coach this next generation of players. I don’t think it’s just culture or diversity, or moving country. I think it’s quite a fluid world now that we can move around. Everybody speaks English, so that’s easy but in Morocco, it’s different. We have a very diverse country. We have six or seven languages that they speak and a vast difference in backgrounds. Some children don’t get education or live in a region where they don’t have transport. Other children have top schooling and top academies to train in. This is a process nowwhich we’re trying to address on a national scale. Given the success of the World Cup, which although it’s fabulous for Morocco, It also brings fresh challenges and trying to manage expectations. So the challenge from this is the majority of the team that qualified for the semi final were bi-national, so they were coached and developed in other countries like France, Belgium, Holland. They were Moroccan born or had Moroccan parents. We have a huge pool of talents in Morocco. Now our job is to find this talent, to develop it, and nurture it so it can compete with the bi-nationals for places in the next national team in the World Cup. SimonJennings RoyalMoroccanFootball Federation: EliteCoach Educator andHeadof YouthDevelopment