The first thing I would do is make coach education free. I would find a way to make coach education free. If that comes through government funding, through a combination of government funding and private sector partnerships.... I've suggested this to the Canadian Soccer Association. Find a corporate partner that will offset the costs of coach education.
We have volunteer coaches. We rely on them in our country. The reality is we're a pay-for-play sporting society. You pay a fee to play a sport. In that type of system, in soccer anyway, there's always been a desire to make soccer the cheap option. It's the cheap sport because all you need is a pair of boots, a grass field, and a ball, and you can run around. If you spread that cost over a bunch of kids, it's not that difficult. I said before it's not that hard to teach a kid how to kick a ball. That's the mentality of most people involved.
I think there's a lot more to it than that. If you don't teach those kids at the right stage of their development, they're never going to fall in love with the game. They're never going to learn the skills they need for lifelong success in the game and they're going to fall away from sports entirely. They're going to miss out on the opportunity to learn those life lessons that we all talk about, that you learn through sport, because they won't be engaged in the games.
How do you make it free? Obviously there is a financial impact. Whether the government's in a position to fund that entirely is not for me to say or suggest. I think it is very important and I would agree with Shane's assessment of making it more academic in a lot of ways. I'm fortunate enough that I hold a U.S. national A licence and I'm doing my UEFA Pro licence at the moment. The most enjoyable aspect of this for me is learning the science behind it, learning the academic approach: how does an eight-year-old learn? There's nothing I learn on those courses about how to play a formation or a tactical analysis. I don't learn that. I have that professional background. I learn the academic side. That's what I have a hunger for.
I think we do have to move into that, but it's a fine balancing act because the more you move into that, the more prohibitive it becomes for a lot of people to get involved. The vast majority of coaches in Canada are volunteers. How can we make it accessible to them but also raise the standard at the same time?