The Bhutan Football Federation signed the Memorandum of Understanding with the Royal Netherlands Football Association on 11th April, 2023 at Hotel Druk where the Press Conference of the World Coaches Course was held. The press conference was attended by the Hon. Consulate for The Netherlands to Bhutan, Mrs. Phuntshok Choden, the founder of WorldCoaches, Mr. Johan van Geijn, the CEO of Acosa Sports India, Mr. Deepak, and the General Secretary of BFF, Mr. Ugyen Wangchhuk. Some of the extremities in the MoU are: Technical Cooperation and Projects, which include the bilateral cooperation of the KNVB with the BFF on creating projects for coach education, skill upgradation programs for coaches in Bhutan, focusing on women’s football development, youth team development, referee education, and infrastructure guidelines and planning From the press conference: Phuntshok Choden, “I think the Bhutan Football Federation and its members have come a long way, and BFF is still thriving to do more and this course at this time, to have football stars like Johanese and Bera in the country, to really inspire, to really give your best, will just inspire our youngsters and the coaches in the country and I would like to thank the world coaches course for bringing the course in the country of happiness. It’s really well timed because the football community in the country is growing and it’s a source of pride for all Bhutanese to have you here.” Johannes Antonius, “It’s a great privilege to be back in Bhutan, I was here in Bhutan in 2002 and 2003 with the Bhutan Olympics. To talk about the course, in 2008, the football association in my country decided that social responsibility is a part of football and should be written down in the papers for the development of football, and so that will allow the program to become a real target and policy within the football association to help other countries develop their football, not just for football but for social development, and the world coaches course has manifested in many aspects of social development related to health issues, gender equality, social cohesion of countries where they have to deal with refugees, migrants… that’s where football can really help.” Johannes Jacobus Neeskens, “It’s a pleasure to be here. I am happy to have a fantastic group of participants in the course, and most importantly, to see 6 women participating in the course because, in our course, it’s very important to include women and I think we should also empower the women to beat their male counterparts and reach the same level. We are very enthusiastic. The participants are very enthusiastic too and very eager to learn a lot, and of course we will impart as much information as we can so that they can improve as coaches, and I am sure they will be able to learn more and know how to work with different age groups and life skills, which is very important in our program, so that they can integrate life skills with football and hopefully the continuation of learning in their lives.” Press Conference Ugyen Wangchhuk, “When I heard about the course from Mr.Deepak, who has been closely working with the Bhutan Football Federation in terms of the development of the infrastructure in the country with regard to football, I came up with the feeling that the world coaches program is glad to be taken by the Bhutan Football Federation and on whether the federation would be interested or not, my first reaction to that was can we also be involved in it. And the first thought that came to my mind was about the match held at Changlimithang when the Bhutan national team got support from the Netherlands coach in the year 2002. His experiences in football will help our federation develop. I thought maybe this would also help our federation grow because, for now, we focus on grassroots football too. So therefore, I thought maybe this would be a different angle of approach to our coaches, and therefore, my first reaction when Deepak told me that he wants to bring the World Coaches Course to Bhutan, I said yes, and I was overjoyed to hear that they would like to help us.”
