Former Premier League stars Robbie Earle and Warren Barton are the lead coaches on Premier Skills and have been involved in every project since the first pilot in Cairo. Since then, hundreds of coaches have benefited from the courses and many have gone on to greater things. Early monitoring from the face to face courses so far has been hugely promising with many participants who have been brought back together for further training having subsequently found new paid employment in coaching at club, school or community levels. Here Robbie talks about what Premier Skills means for the participants.
"It’s clear from my involvement in Premier Skills that the Premier League is a lot more than just a provider of live games and highlights across the world. The Premier League has a lot of knowledge to pass on. From our visit to Delhi and Kolkata you could see there were a lot of challenges to the structure and communication of individual clubs and leagues. But with all its experience the Premier League can be used as a benchmark and that people can learn lessons and develop their own local football. The most important thing is leaving legacy.
"The aim of each course is to leave some pathways and opportunities for young people so that they can talk to local FA’s, councils and government bodies. Some of the students that we first worked with in Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt have got jobs off of the back of the work that we’ve done.
"What we’ve found with Premier Skills is that there’s an insatiable desire to learn. They’re like sponges, the more we give them the more they take on board. For a week it’s non-stop. We’re starting at eight in the morning and sometimes not getting finished until seven at night, yet before and after people are still are coming to ask you questions. They just want to accept as much information as they can to take back home.
"It’s all about building confidence to deliver, certainly with their language skills. You’ve some people who were slightly embarrassed that their English wasn’t good enough but actually from working with the British Council they found their language wasn’t as bad as they thought. So, on the pitch, people got more confident to stand up and talk.
"There have been lots on individual success stories and a couple of pertinent ones in Egypt. We had one woman who was an outstanding footballer and coach and could certainly work within a club environment in this country.
Robbie coaching on a Premier Skills course
"What was interesting was at the beginning of the week some of the male participants were uncomfortable when she was taking coaching but by the end of the week their attitudes had changed towards her. There were obviously cultural attitudes towards her but what was nice was that within the Premier Skills environment she became accepted. There was another woman who had a traditional burkha, was quite introverted and never really made eye contact with the coaches. But by the end of the week her confidence had grown so much, if you compared her to the beginning of the week you could never believe it was the same person.
"Those are the things that make it worthwhile: you have 40 plus people at the beginning of the week who have never met before and come from different demographic backgrounds and you see them come through and gain confidence and build friendships. But bigger than that they’ve started working with each other: they’ve put together clubs, they’ve created leagues, they’re playing against each other’s schools, they’re starting to go to institutions and get some sponsorship behind them. So all the things that you’d like to happen are happening naturally now; all we’ve done is ignite that fire."
