There’s an art to coaching. Whether it’s tactics, personality or individual gravitas, a good coach needs a wide-range of skills to succeed and inspire their players, and as professional soccer grows, coaches and technical staffs must grow with it.
D.C. United Academy coaches Nate Kish and Dave Sanford recently took a big step in their professional development when they earned their Elite Formation Coaching License after completing a rigorous 14-month youth development course through the French Football Federation (FFF).
France and the FFF have been at the forefront of youth development, and have raised stars like Kylian Mbappé, who received the Best Young Player Award at the 2018 World Cup after helping lead France to their second World Cup title.
The course, offered through a special partnership between MLS and the FFF, has provided training and certification to over 40 coaches in the league since its formation in 2013. Current United assistant coach and former academy coach Nolan Sheldon also holds the certification.
The partnership between MLS and the FFF was developed to help exchange best practices and expose MLS coaches to world-class techniques at the forefront of youth development. With that knowledge, coaches can bring it back to their clubs and academies to help develop and nurture world-class players.
“It was an honor to be selected for the course,” Kish said. “It’s a very small pool that gets selected and has the opportunity to go through the course and we were fortunate enough to send two representatives.”
The course is available in the U.S. to academy coaches from MLS clubs, and United was one of only two teams in the league, the other being Sporting Kansas City, to have two representatives selected to take the course.
Candidates are selected by the league and are pulled from a highly qualified pool of candidates. Among the requirements for eligibility are having an “A” coaching license from the U.S. Soccer Federation, being a full-time member of a MLS Academy and personal recommendations from the club’s General Manager and Academy Director.
Kish and Sanford were honored to be selected and gave their thanks to United General Manager Dave Kasper, Academy Director Ryan Martin and MLS Technical Director of Youth Player and Development Fred Lipka for giving them the opportunity.
Once selected, Kish and Sanford went on a soccer excursion that included two weeks of intensive field and classroom instruction at France’s national training facility at the Clairefontaine, followed by individual trips to observe some of the top clubs in Europe. The pair landed in Spain where Kish spent time with Spanish side Malaga and Sanford visited La Liga giants Atletico Madrid.
The pair also went through four additional weeks of domestic training in the U.S. and Canada.
The intensive course was designed to not only teach on-the-field skills like tactics and training techniques, but also off-the-field skills as well in an effort to better serve the club’s academy and its players. It was a complete experience that the pair of coaches said broadened their knowledge on how to develop players and manage an academy.
“It’s geared toward leadership,” Sanford said. “That was an expectation of the course, to take some of these ideas and improve our processes at home and enhance the work we’re doing in our academy.”
Sanford, an Academy Manager and head coach of the U-13 team, and Kish, the head coach of the U-18/19 and U-23 teams, are uniquely positioned to use their newfound knowledge with players at ages where it can influence them the most.
Their added knowledge is arriving at a time when the infrastructure around United’s academy has continued to grow. The recently announced the DMV Pathway 2 Pro program will streamline relations with United and top-level youth teams in the DMV, and Loudoun United’s entry into the USL next season will complete the pipeline that can push players through the Academy to the first team.
“It’s extremely important to get this experience,” Martin said. “Being able to send two representatives is a tremendous statement from Dave [Kasper] and ownership. As we look forward, we can continue to build out that infrastructure that can produce players for the first team. That’s the ultimate challenge for us as an academy.”
