Pilot women's coaching course in Denmark

UEFA's support for the further qualifications of female coaches across member associations will be showcased this week with the opening stages of a pilot course for the UEFA A licence in Denmark.

Headed by Denmark women's national team coach Nils Nielsen, the course has already started to equip female coaches with the UEFA B licence, some of them now having moved on to the A licence. Denmark is the only national association of the 11 participating in the first phase of this development scheme who will run a tailor-made course. The programmes were initiated, and are supported, by UEFA's Football Education Services.

"The content, the amount of time and the assessments will all be the same as they are for male coaches," said Danish Football Association (DBU) technical director Peter Rudbæk. "While the key elements stay the same, we have had to be flexible with the way that we offer the course to female participants so that it can fit in with their life schedules. So we've had to think differently than we used to.

"It will be really positive because the six or seven participants taking the A licence have mostly played more than 100 matches and have a lot of football experience, so it will be great for women's football. Of course we can learn all the time from these sessions, but also the experiences of other countries. If any of the other associations wish to find out how we do it, then I encourage them to join us."

Final assessments for the course will be completed towards the end of 2015 and come after the start of the pilot courses, carried out by the Croatian Football Federation (HNS) in Djurdjevac in September.

Future courses of one module and 40 hours are scheduled around UEFA development tournaments in the Republic of Ireland, Montenegro, Azerbaijan, Romania, Israel and Finland in 2015, with the possibility of further sessions in Moldova, Turkey and Poland.