The standard of soccer coaching in Bermuda leaves something to be desired, according to one of Bermuda Football Association’s top officials.

Former player and national team coach, Robert Calderon, now second vice-president at the BFA, has questioned the ability of some of those in charge of the Island’s clubs, declaring them worse than when he last donned his boots in the 1980s.

However, far from just moaning about the situation, Calderon and his colleagues are launching a number of initiatives aimed at improving coaches and through them players.

One of the aims of the plan is to see coaches get the UEFA B Licence.

In the past, taking the course has entailed travelling overseas, but following high level meetings in London, England, between a BFA delegation led by president Larry Mussenden and English Football Association officials earlier this year, it is hoped the course might now be offered in Bermuda.

Calderon said there were a number of reasons for the decline in standards over recent years.

“We have had a lot of squabbles in the recent past, we have brought coaches in who have concentrated on single teams and we have moved away from teams coming to Bermuda and have had teams fly out on a pretty regular basis. This means that players that normally wouldn’t make the national team but had the potential for the future didn’t get a chance to compete. We have also had drug problems which is a problem throughout the country,” he said.

“I also think the quality of coaching overall is not as good, and I am sure I will get slammed for making this comment but I will be very blunt, it is not as good as it was when I was a player.

“Every team had coaches that had good ability. Most of them had B licences from the English FA, they taught the fundamentals better than what I think is being done now and as a result the quality of teams at the domestic level was far superior than what we see now.

“We have to accept that. It is painful to say it but it is true. Like anything else, until you accept that you have some issues, you can’t go about the business of correcting them.”

To that end Calderon said the BFA had a tentative agreement from the English FA about flying someone in during August next year to teach coaching.

“That would be to me a major accomplishment,” he said. “Nothing even close has taken place on the Island. People have had to travel overseas to do that.”

Calderon said the plan was to pay a qualified instructor to come to Bermuda and provide them with all the necessary tools they would need.

“It will be a little more difficult to do because we are going to try and do it at night and at weekends, so the time period will be stretched but I think we will pull it off,” he said.

Calderon said the fruits of such labours for those who took time out to take part would be almost immediate.

“I think the immediate benefit is (in them) being better prepared to go into training sessions and actually disseminate information that makes sense, (hold sessions) that are organised and have something in common,” he said. “One of the things we find is that there are so many different ways of coaching. What we would like to do is (for them to) at least talk about the fundamentals of the game in a pretty singular way.

“We don’t do that right now. We tend to get caught up with systems of play and tactics and really at the end of the day we need players who have better fundamentals.”

Calderon said he was not a doommonger and was confident the situation could be turned around fairly easily.

“There are still pockets of very good players on this Island. It is just that it is pockets,” he said. “Around 20 years ago the top seven or eight teams had six, seven or eight very good players — that clearly is not the case anymore. As a result of that you can see the correlation in the reduction in the quality of football.

“But I do see some good players out there. That means there is hope but there needs to be more of them.”