Barbados’ new technical director of football, Brazilian Marcos Falopa, isn’t kicking for goal with the national football teams.
Instead, he is primarily wearing his boots to conduct courses and workshops rather than provide on-the-spot technical coaching advice during regional tournaments.
This was revealed yesterday by Barbados Football Association’s (BFA) president Randy Harris after a second national team left the island in the space of two weeks to kick for regional soccer supremacy without the experienced Falopa, a former assistant manager of Brazil’s national team between 1986 and 1988.
Falopa didn’t accompany the senior squad on its failed Caribbean Football Union’s (CFU) Cup second round Group 8 campaign in Haiti last week, while he was also noticeably missing when the national Under-17 team departed on Wednesday for the same country to contest the eight-team final round of CFU’s qualifiers starting on Sunday.
“He is an advisor, not a coach. Basically, in terms of the FIFA guidelines, a technical director should not be a national coach. There are two different positions. That’s not his job,” Harris told WEEKEND SPORT yesterday when asked why Falopa hadn’t travelled with the teams to perform a technical role.
“He has assisted the Under-17 team at their training sessions as well as the senior squad but he’s more involved in coaching education in Barbados,” Harris said.
The widely travelled Falopa, who has coached football programmes in 35 countries in the North, Central America and the Caribbean and was once technical director with Santos FC professional team and manager of Palmeiras in his native Brazil, was hired as BFA’s technical director in August.
But Harris said it was felt that because the contract for the 65-year-old Falopa was only for six months in the first instance, he should concentrate mainly on conducting courses for technical people.
To this end, Falopa will be conducting a preliminary CONCACAF ‘D’ licence course next month for 30 Barbadian coaches, as well as a ‘B’ licence course for the BFA.
“From 2016, it will be mandatory for all registered coach of local clubs to have the BFA certification. We are also doing coaching courses for futsal (indoor) and beach soccer in the future,” Harris declared.
“He is also doing some programmes and workshops with the Ministry of Education and the National Sports Council. He is very busy at the moment but since his initial contract is for six months, he wants to make sure that he completes these programmes,” added Harris.
But even without Falopa’s guidance, Harris didn’t conceal his disappointment that the Bajan Tridents failed to qualify for next month’s CFU Cup finals in Jamaica.
“I’m more disappointed that they did not qualify after such a good start. Obviously something went wrong,” Harris said.
The Tridents flattered to deceive, losing to hosts Haiti and French Guiana after beating St Kitts/Nevis in their opening game.
“I have to await a report from the head coach [Colin “Potato” Forde] to ascertain what were the problems that we faced that we did not get another point,” Harris said.
Harris said a meeting would be convened with the technical director and members of the newly established technical committee, chaired by former national coach Adrian Donovan.
“We are not going to prejudge anything but we have to find out what were the real problems. We will assess our performance and decide on the way forward,” Harris said.
