Inside Football with... Ashley Westwood: Coaching Badges

Ashley Westwood played for Manchester United, Crewe Alexandra, Bradford City, Sheffield Wednesday, Northampton Town and Chester City during a long career and now finds himself as a manager in India.

I’m in South Korea doing my pro coach license. When a player or coach says they’re doing their badges, they usually mean the qualifications affiliated to a football association. The badges taken in England or Scotland will be part of UEFA’s scheme, for instance. I’ve done the UEFA B and A. They took me four years. The pro license takes another two years – that’s if you get selected.

Until recently, there were only 32 places per year for the English pro license course. The cost is considerable too, £3,000 for the B, £5,500 for the A and £9,000 for the pro. But the time is the hardest thing – you still have to make a living while doing your badges.

The A requires 180 hours of tuition, three times that studying and a 14-day residential course. I wouldn’t do them if I didn’t think they were worth it.
They improve you as a coach and they’re great for contacts.

Nicky Butt, Stephen Clemence, Jamie Clapham and Craig Hignett were among the former players on my A license, plus others with no background in professional football - who believe that professional football is a closed shop. And it can be. But yYou spend a lot of time with your peers and work out who you like, who you think you could work with in the future.

On one Scottish course, a Portuguese coach Nuno met a young Scottish coach Ian Cathro, who’d been at Dundee United’s academy. He asked him to be his assistant at Rio Ave in Portugal and then at Valencia. Cathro is now assistant manager at Newcastle and he’s not even 30.

You really get to see who can handle pressure. Some potential coaches struggle when they have to stand up and address their peers. You see their nerves, their stumbled words, their red faces and dry mouths. But they’ll have to stand up in front of players every day as a manager.

You also have to be able to do the job; coaching is totally different to being a player. I’ve seen potential coaches forget the bibs or cones or just look like they’re not cut out for a future in management. Doing your badges is far more than the theory and you’ll get found out as a person if you’re not up to the challenge.

The courses are superb, though. Lots of resources go into them, your training sessions are filmed, you work with full teams of players, they’ll get a crane in for an aerial view of your final training sessions and mic you up so they can hear you. If you’re not fit then the assessors will hear you panting. They are excellent preparation for being a coach.

I’m now doing the badge for the Asia Football Association (AFA), given that I work in India. Some countries also require a further specific license before they’ll let you coach at the top level, the S license in Japan or the P in Korea.

You may wonder why I’m doing this in the middle of the football season. Well in India, I’m not.

India’s domestic i-League doesn’t start until January. The Indian Super league starts next month and almost all our players have been loaned to play in that.
We can’t deny them the opportunity to play in that tournament and we actually gave them a four-week pre, pre-season before they joined their clubs.

The eight-team Indian Super League, which last season featured Alessandro Del Piero, Elano, David James, and coaches including Roberto Carlos, Zico, Marco Materazzi, Peter Taylor, David Platt and Nicolas Anelka, starts on 3rd October. John Arne Riise and Florent Malouda are among the players signed up this time.

I’ll cover the ISL for television and get to see the best Indian players ahead of our own I-League season with Bengaluru FC in Bangalore – and that’s my clear priority.

I’ll get my players back on 10th December and can work with them ahead of the I-League starting on 15th January.

We won the league in my first season and lost out on the last day in my second. I’m determined to win the title again, but first I’ll concentrate on completing my pro coaching license with the AFA.

I don’t speak Korean, I only actually know one word of Korean and that’s for a vegetable, but the course is being taken in English and I’ve got a translator to help for when I have to address the Korean players that I’m working with.

It’s challenging and enjoyable and a long, long way from my ex-life as a professional footballer in England’s top five divisions. But I feel that these experiences are making me a better person - and a better coach.