African soccer is entering an important period in the development of its coaches. Across club football, youth national teams and senior international environments, more African coaches are being trusted with major technical responsibility, while CAF continues to develop its coach-education structures across the continent. As presidents, technical leaders and national-team coaches from CAF's 54 Member Associations gather in Cabo Verde, the more important question is no longer whether African coaches are capable of operating at elite level. It is whether African soccer can create a system that repeatedly provides talented coaches with the education, mentoring, experience and opportunity required to reach it.
For decades, many high-profile coaching positions across African soccer were associated with recruitment from Europe or elsewhere. External expertise can undoubtedly add value, and international exchange should remain an important part of coach development. Modern soccer benefits when ideas travel between countries, leagues and cultures. The issue is not whether African federations should stop employing foreign coaches, but whether their own coach-development systems are sufficiently strong to produce credible candidates who can compete for those same positions on merit.
Recent AFCON competitions have provided increasingly persuasive evidence that this is possible. The 2025 tournament reached the semi-final stage with all four remaining teams led by African coaches, guaranteeing a fourth consecutive AFCON-winning coach from the continent following the successes of Djamel Belmadi, Aliou Cissé and Émerse Faé. That should not encourage federations to appoint coaches simply because of nationality. Instead, it should strengthen the argument for creating environments in which African coaches can develop the tactical, technical, leadership and high-performance capabilities required to become the strongest candidates available.
The challenge facing CAF and its Member Associations is therefore to move beyond individual success stories and create a sustainable coaching system. Producing one successful national-team head coach is valuable, but developing a continuous pipeline of high-quality grassroots, academy, professional and international coaches would have a much greater long-term impact on African soccer.
A Licence Should Start the Development Process, Not Finish It
CAF already provides a structured coaching pathway progressing from grassroots education through its D, C, B and A qualifications before reaching the CAF Pro Licence at elite level. The structure recognises that the requirements placed on coaches change considerably as players progress through the pathway.
A grassroots coach working with children requires strong communication skills, safeguarding knowledge, an understanding of learning and the ability to develop fundamental technical behaviours. Coaches moving into academy environments need deeper knowledge of tactical development, maturation, physical preparation and individual player progression. At senior professional level, coaching expands again into sophisticated game-model development, periodisation, performance analysis, staff leadership, recruitment, player management and decision-making within high-pressure organisations.
Coach education therefore cannot simply become a series of progressively more difficult tactical courses. The role itself changes as the coach moves through the game.
ISSPF explores these evolving demands in Coaching Development in Football: Requirements of the Elite Coach, where the modern coach is positioned as the leader of a multidisciplinary performance environment rather than simply the person responsible for team selection and tactics. Elite coaches increasingly work alongside analysts, medical practitioners, sport scientists, strength and conditioning coaches, psychologists and recruitment specialists. They do not need to become experts in every discipline, but they do need sufficient understanding to connect those disciplines to the football programme.
This is one reason why obtaining a licence should represent the beginning of another developmental phase rather than the end of the learning process. Formal education provides knowledge and frameworks, but coaching quality develops through the repeated application of that knowledge in demanding environments.
A coach may complete an advanced qualification and still require significant experience before being ready to lead a professional club or national team. The important question for federations is therefore what happens after the certificate is awarded. Are promising coaches given opportunities to work inside academies? Can they enter national youth-team programmes? Are experienced coaches available as mentors? Can assistant coaches progressively assume greater responsibility? Are successful domestic coaches genuinely considered when major technical vacancies emerge?
Without those opportunities, coach education risks producing qualifications without producing careers.
This is why partnerships between football organisations and specialist education providers can play an important role alongside formal federation licensing. The continuing relationship between COSAFA and the International Soccer Science & Performance Federation (ISSPF) provides one practical example. Through the partnership, practitioners across Southern Africa can access the COSAFA–ISSPF Diploma in Football Science & Coaching, designed to complement existing coaching qualifications with applied education across four important performance areas: Strength & Conditioning for Soccer Performance, Soccer Nutrition, Physical Training & Soccer Methodology, and Soccer Psychology.
The value of this type of education is that it broadens the coach's understanding beyond tactical organisation alone. A head coach does not need to replace the strength and conditioning practitioner, nutritionist or psychologist, but understanding how those disciplines influence training, preparation and player development can improve communication and decision-making across the entire staff.
For practitioners within Southern Africa, the Diploma also represents an example of how regional football organisations can connect formal coaching structures with flexible continued professional development. The online format allows coaches and practitioners to study alongside their existing football roles, helping create an educational pathway that can continue between formal licence courses.
The wider COSAFA–ISSPF partnership has subsequently expanded into additional specialist education, including Goalkeeper Coaching Science and Soccer Performance Analysis, demonstrating how coach and practitioner development can become an ongoing process rather than a single qualification event.
This is the type of layered pathway African soccer increasingly needs: federation licences providing the formal coaching structure, supported by applied education, mentoring, practical experience and continued professional development.
Elite Coaching Requires More Than Tactical Knowledge
Tactical understanding remains at the centre of coaching, but elite leadership requires the ability to turn tactical ideas into repeatable behaviours. A coach may understand how a 4-3-3 should function or how an aggressive pressing strategy might theoretically work, yet still struggle to design a training process that enables players to recognise the appropriate cues consistently during competition.
ISSPF's Game Model Development in Soccer examines this relationship between playing philosophy, tactical principles and the weekly training process. A game model becomes valuable only when the ideas contained within it can be translated into training content and eventually into player behaviour.
This should be a major consideration within advanced coach development across Africa. Courses need to expose coaches to realistic problems rather than only presenting tactical theory. Coaches should be challenged to adapt when players become unavailable, when travel reduces preparation time or when the characteristics of their squad do not perfectly match the preferred system. They should learn how to change session design after an intense match, how to introduce tactical information without overloading players and how to prepare alternative game plans without losing the team's identity.
Modern coaching also requires greater competence in performance analysis. Coaches now have access to large volumes of video and data, but possessing more information does not automatically create better decisions. The coach needs to know which information genuinely supports the game model and which statistics simply add noise.
The ISSPF analysis of Tactical Analysis in the Modern Game demonstrates why analysis should connect directly with coaching practice. Opposition analysis, post-match review and team data have value when they influence the decisions made during training and competition. Developing coaches therefore need education not only in interpreting information, but in deciding what players actually need to know.
This same principle applies to physical performance. Coaches need sufficient understanding of training load, recovery and conditioning to discuss the weekly programme effectively with performance staff. An integrated methodology prevents tactical and physical preparation from becoming separate processes competing for training time.
The COSAFA–ISSPF Diploma provides a useful example here because its structure deliberately combines coaching methodology with strength and conditioning, nutrition and psychology. This multidisciplinary understanding is becoming increasingly important for coaches who aspire to work in high-performance environments, where the quality of collaboration between departments can influence both player availability and match performance.
Leadership then connects the entire system.
The modern head coach manages players with different personalities and experiences, staff members with specialist expertise and senior decision-makers who may have different strategic priorities. The coach needs to communicate clearly without attempting to control every detail personally.
ISSPF's Leadership and Culture for High Performance Soccer examines why effective coaching leadership is built around clarity, standards, responsibility and communication. These qualities are particularly important within national-team environments, where players may arrive from different leagues, tactical systems and professional cultures and have only a short period in which to align around one collective objective.
Developing African coaches for these environments therefore requires much more than knowledge of formations. It involves producing leaders capable of integrating people, information and methodology while still making clear football decisions.
Building a Pathway Before the Vacancy Appears
One of the biggest opportunities for African federations is to treat coaching succession with the same seriousness as player succession.
When a senior head coach leaves, the first reaction is often to begin an external recruitment process. That may still be appropriate, but a strong federation should already know which domestic and national-team coaches are progressing towards the level required.
The development of Émerse Faé offers one example of how progressive responsibility can work. His pathway included youth coaching and experience within the senior national-team staff before he eventually assumed head-coach responsibility. Senegal's Pape Thiaw followed a different route through domestic football and national-team structures before moving into the senior role.
The individual journeys differ, but the broader principle is the same: federations should identify promising coaches before senior vacancies arise.
National youth teams can become especially important in this process. They should not only develop players but also provide coaches with experience of tournament preparation, international opposition, multidisciplinary staff structures and the pressures associated with representing a nation.
Assistant-coach positions can serve a similar function. Working alongside an experienced head coach allows developing coaches to observe decision-making, player management and the demands of major competitions before carrying complete responsibility themselves.
Mentoring can accelerate that learning further. Experienced coaches possess knowledge that cannot always be transferred effectively through classroom education, particularly around managing difficult moments, communicating with senior players or handling pressure when results deteriorate.
The objective should not be to create one identical career route that every coach must follow. Coaching pathways, like player pathways, are rarely linear. Some coaches will emerge through academies, others through domestic senior football, analysis, specialist coaching or former playing careers. What matters is creating enough connected opportunities for talent to progress.
Technical directors have an important role in creating that continuity. A federation with an established football identity can help younger coaches understand the broader principles required across national teams without demanding that every age group plays exactly the same formation.
Alignment should exist around terminology, player-development principles, coaching behaviours and performance standards rather than rigid tactical uniformity.
The same thinking must extend into women's soccer. Developing women's football without developing female coaches and technical leaders at the same time risks creating an incomplete pathway. Coach education needs to provide genuine progression from entry-level courses through advanced qualifications and eventually into senior leadership roles.
The underlying principle should remain consistent throughout the system: identify coaching potential, educate it, expose it to increasingly demanding environments and create genuine opportunities for advancement.
Developing Coaches With the Same Intent as Players
African soccer has traditionally invested enormous energy into finding talented players. Academies scout young footballers across the continent, national associations monitor emerging prospects and clubs constantly search for players capable of progressing towards professional and international levels.
Coaching talent deserves the same level of attention.
Federations should be asking which emerging coaches demonstrate exceptional communication, who consistently improves players, who designs high-quality training, who understands tactical problems particularly well and which assistant coaches appear capable of assuming greater responsibility. Former professional players entering coaching should be evaluated on coaching potential rather than playing reputation alone, while talented coaches who did not experience elite playing careers should still have viable routes to the highest levels.
That creates the basis of a coaching talent-identification system.
CAF's ongoing development programmes show that the process can begin at grassroots level. Coach-education activity connected to the African Schools Football Championship has provided aspiring coaches with education covering session planning, leadership, player safety, safeguarding, communication and talent identification. Creating strong foundations at this level matters because the quality of elite soccer is influenced by what happens throughout the development pyramid.
The same logic sits behind the COSAFA–ISSPF education partnership. The COSAFA–ISSPF Diploma in Football Science & Coaching offers coaches and practitioners across the Southern African region an opportunity to extend their knowledge in areas increasingly central to modern coaching and performance. By combining soccer methodology with strength and conditioning, nutrition and psychology, the Diploma supports the broader objective of developing practitioners who understand the interconnected nature of elite performance.
This type of programme does not replace CAF coaching licences, nor should it attempt to. Its value lies in complementing the formal licence pathway with continued professional development that allows coaches to broaden their applied knowledge.
For African soccer, that combined approach may be particularly important. Formal qualifications provide standards and credibility, while additional education, mentoring and practical coaching opportunities help turn those qualifications into expertise.
This week's CAF Strategy Conference therefore provides an opportunity to discuss a much larger question than who should coach individual national teams. It is an opportunity to consider what African coaching should look like as a connected development system.
CAF already has a licensing pathway. The continent already contains talented coaches, and recent AFCON tournaments have demonstrated that African coaches can lead teams successfully in high-pressure environments. Regional organisations such as COSAFA are also creating partnerships designed to increase access to specialist education and continued professional development.
The next phase is to connect these elements more deliberately.
African soccer does not need to close itself to outside knowledge. International coaching exchange remains valuable and should continue. What the continent should aim to achieve is an environment in which federations are not forced to look elsewhere because their own development systems have failed to prepare credible candidates.
Appointments can then genuinely be based on quality, suitability, methodology and leadership rather than assumptions about where expertise must come from.
Achieving that requires long-term investment in coach education, mentoring, domestic opportunities, youth national-team experience, technical leadership and continued professional development. It also requires patience because elite coaches, like elite players, are developed over many years.
The success of African coaching should therefore not be measured solely by counting how many African coaches currently occupy senior positions. The more important question is whether the next generation is already being identified and prepared to compete for those jobs.
Africa increasingly has the evidence that its coaches can lead successfully at elite level. The opportunity now is to create a pathway capable of making that success repeatable.
For practitioners interested in continuing their own development, ISSPF's Coaching Development in Football, Game Model Development in Soccer and Leadership and Culture for High Performance Soccer provide further applied insight into methodology and high-performance leadership. Coaches and practitioners across Southern Africa can also explore the COSAFA–ISSPF Diploma in Football Science & Coaching, which provides a structured multidisciplinary pathway across soccer methodology, strength and conditioning, nutrition and psychology.
The long-term objective for African soccer should not simply be to create better teams. It should be to create stronger football systems, and coaches capable of leading them.
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