With qualifying matches for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, and the 2021 Gold Cup looming, the time for the Bahamas Football Association’s (BFA) new technical director to make an impact is now.
Marc Bircham, who comes in with a wealth of experience, said he has been engaged in Zoom sessions with local club presidents and officials over the past two months, ever since he was hired, and is looking forward to coming to The Bahamas and accepts the challenge of getting The Bahamas’ programs to a level of prominence and respectability in the region and the world.
On the senior men’s side, The Bahamas is currently listed at number 30 in the CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) region and is at number 196 in the world, according to the latest FIFA/Coca-Cola World Rankings. The Bahamas’ women are unranked, still looking to secure world ranking points.
Bircham, an English-born Canadian, holds a UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Pro License, the highest coaching certification available in UEFA. He holds UEFA ‘A’ and ‘B’ licenses along with a Football Association (FA) coaching certificate. During his football coaching career, he has worked with the Queens Park Rangers (QPR) and Millwall Football Clubs in England, and served as a youth coach for four years in Canada. In the United States, he worked as an assistant manager for the Arizona United and Chicago Fire soccer teams in Major League Soccer (MLS).
He has helped to coach a couple of professional football stars – Raheem Sterling with QPR and Alphonso Davies with the Canadian national team. As a player, he started his professional career at Millwall and later joined QPR where he became a crowd favorite. He also played for the Yeovil Town Football Club in Yeovil, Somerset, England, and internationally, he represented Canada in two FIFA World Cup qualification matches.
Bircham made a cumulative 272 appearances and had 11 goals while playing professionally in England. At QPR, he was the captain.
“Two of the biggest things to me [are] football and family,” said Bircham. “I’ve played and coached in England for 20 years and coached in the MLS with Chicago and Phoenix. One of the main goals is setting up a center of excellence. Once we have that, that will be the hub and headquarters of everything that goes on with football in the country. It’s an incubator to providing excellence for the country. I want a focus on coach education because the better coaches you have, the better players you produce. We have to be able to establish elite coaching. Also, I would like for us to look at bringing in teams for all age groups to test skills and improve our level of play.”
Bircham said he has a soft spot for women’s football seeing that he has a couple of daughters who love the game.
“I’m a big believer and supporter of women’s football, and from what I have seen with the senior girls in The Bahamas, there are some fantastic athletes. With Jamaica qualifying for the women’s world cup, it’s not that big of a jump for the women in The Bahamas to get there. We just have to get a philosophy and idea of how we want to play, as teams and individuals,” said Bircham.
Jamaica became the first Caribbean nation to ever qualify for a women’s world cup and became the first Caribbean country to have both men and women’s teams participate in the men and women’s world cup.
Manoeuvring through these COVID-19 times in which sports worldwide came to a standstill, Bircham said he just yearns for the day when football will return and a state of normalcy is resumed. He’s looking forward to The Bahamas playing FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) sanctioned matches in the not-too-distant future. The first round of the CONCACAF qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 is set for March 2021, and the prelims of the 2021 Gold Cup in which The Bahamas will take on Guadeloupe at a venue yet to be announced, is set for July 2-6, 2021.
“I can’t wait for COVID-19 restrictions to be lifted and for us to get back in the community. We need to get back to seeing the game played. I’m looking forward to that,” said Bircham. “As for playing without fans, professionally it’s awful. It’s not the same game. The fans make the games and watching the games without fans makes it seem weird. For grassroots football, it can be an excellent thing because parents could put a lot of pressure on children, but it’s all about kids and developing kids. One of my aims is to get the kids to focus on academics as well so they could get some of those scholarships that are out there. A lot of the kids I coached have developed into father figures and are mentors themselves, whether they came up through the college ranks or went straight into the professional ranks. When I look at the amount of birthdays and weddings and anniversaries I get invited to, it’s only then that you realize that you played such a big role in their lives. It’s a joy watching them grow up to become successful young men and women.”
Also among the new technical director’s goals are expanding the coaching curriculum to Grand Bahama and the Family Islands and hopefully playing a part in the creation of a new website for the BFA. He said that he wants to foster communication effectively so that league administrators and officials will be able to better interact with coaches and players.
For next year’s first round of the world cup qualifiers, The Bahamas is in Group F with Trinidad and Tobago, St. Kitts and Nevis, Guyana and Puerto Rico. The Bahamas was set to kick off the first round of play against St. Kitts and Nevis, at home, on October 10, but that match has been postponed due to restrictions imposed from COVID-19.
The BFA has published its “Kicking COVID-19” guidelines for the commencement of football activities, outlining the responsibilities of parents, coaches and players.
The post Bircham excited about coming to The Bahamas appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/bircham-excited-about-coming-to-the-bahamas/
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