There are lots of foot­ball clubs in T&T each with its own coach­ing phi­los­o­phy and style fo­cus­ing on var­i­ous age brack­ets and com­pet­i­tive leagues. The foot­ball school that I am most fa­mil­iar with and have al­ways found to be one of the more pop­u­lar and mean­ing­ful ones since my days in sec­ondary school is the Dig­i­cel La Fou­cade Soc­cer Clin­ic. Dion La Fou­cade is an in­ter­na­tion­al youth coach and founder of this foot­ball club which has been in ex­is­tence since 1988. "Coach Dion" as he is re­spect­ful­ly re­ferred to by his stu­dents of this beau­ti­ful game, holds many coach­ing cer­tifi­cates and li­cens­es from South, Cen­tral, North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope along with be­ing a se­nior mem­ber of many coach­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions across the globe.

Aside from be­ing a to­tal "foot­ball en­thu­si­ast," one thing that be­comes very ap­par­ent very quick­ly is his deep faith and spir­i­tu­al so­lace from where his every en­deav­our ex­tends. Coach Dion's vi­sion for foot­ball in T&T, as well as the Caribbean, is mul­ti-di­men­sion­al and through his school he gets one step clos­er every year, to­wards re­al­is­ing his vi­sion.

Youth De­vel­op­ment

The Dig­i­cel La Fou­cade Soc­cer Clin­ic is a sure op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op tal­ent­ed youths in a pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment, to be­come skil­ful play­ers and per­sons, per­form­ing to the best of their abil­i­ty. At the sec­ondary school lev­el, some might re­mem­ber play­ers like Ja­son De­venish, Justin Fo­jo, Marten Robert­son, Rhett and Ryan Abra­ham, Zane O' Brien, Matthew Ca­ma­cho, Jack Wee­don and Bren­don Bar­ry, just to name a few play­ers of the thou­sands here and abroad who has had the priv­i­lege to work with Dion. Coach­ing at the na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els he has helped groom play­ers like Leslie Fitz­patrick, Anique Walk­er, Sean De Sil­va, Brent Rahim and Re­hana Omardeen.

Coach De­vel­op­ment

Equal­ly as pas­sion­ate about ath­lete de­vel­op­ment, Coach Dion seeks to de­vel­op youth coach­es, ed­u­cat­ing them to be in­tel­li­gent teach­ers of the game and in­spi­ra­tions to their ath­lete stu­dents. He has de­vel­oped a coach­ing syl­labus that maps out the de­vel­op­ment path of any ath­lete at­tend­ing his club so that any­one on his coach­ing team be­comes em­pow­ered with a struc­tured un­der­stand­ing of how to mold the ath­lete from age four to 18 years.

So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty

Thanks to the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the La Fou­cade Soc­cer Clin­ic, Coach Dion has been able to reach the trou­bled youth. He vis­its the ju­ve­nile pen­i­ten­tiaries reg­u­lar­ly as a men­tor, pos­i­tive role mod­el, and mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er. Their par­tic­i­pa­tion in his camps is al­ways en­cour­aged and wel­comed. Coach Dion's dreams are vast, go­ing the ex­tra dis­tance to out­do any­thing that has been done be­fore in T&T, all in the name of progress. For the past 15 years, Dion has con­sis­tent­ly brought down coach­es and in­struc­tors from Liv­er­pool, AC Mi­lan, In­ter Mi­lan, Birm­ing­ham, Ajax, Black­burn Rovers, Man­ches­ter Unit­ed and Sheffield Unit­ed.

Ea­mon Mul­vey and Kevin Ward of Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, Jan Olde Riek­erink, acad­e­my di­rec­tor of world fa­mous Dutch club Ajax and Iain Brun­skill, the cur­rent re­serve team coach of Black­burn Rovers, for­mer­ly of Liv­er­pool FC have all done coach­ing sem­i­nars and Skills De­vel­op­men­tal Clin­ics for ages six–18 years on Coach Dion's in­vi­ta­tion.

Hum­ble as they are, these world renowned ex­perts will­ing­ly shared their su­pe­ri­or coach/in­struc­tor skills and knowl­edge. Every op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from the best is al­ways well re­ceived by all con­cerned, pos­i­tive­ly re­flect­ing a de­sire by our lo­cal coach­es to be­come bet­ter at what they do. He has al­so brought in idols like Sha­ka His­lop, John Barnes, Tiffany Roberts, Ty­rone Mar­shall and Ice­box Ath­lete founder, mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and ex­er­cise sci­en­tist, Spencer Wood. Sha­ka His­lop has en­dorsed Coach Dion and his club as pos­sess­ing a vivid un­der­stand­ing of the im­por­tance of a mean­ing­ful, all round de­vel­op­ment of play­ers whether their goal is to make it at the big­ger stage or just sim­ply be a good ath­lete.

At the Liv­er­pool Foot­ball Club, Coach Dion has been al­lowed the rare priv­i­lege of lead­ing coach­ing ses­sions with their en­tire youth groups from ages nine to 18 years old. Ac­cord­ing to John Owens, Acad­e­my Man­ag­er, "He has earned the rep­u­ta­tion for cre­at­ing and de­liv­er­ing skills ses­sions for in­di­vid­ual play­ers to work with the ball in a fun and test­ing en­vi­ron­ment." He is one of the hum­blest and sim­plest peo­ple one can know which makes it easy for the chil­dren to re­late to him. Yet, his en­thu­si­asm and in-depth knowl­edge for what he does, con­veys to par­ents that their chil­dren are in the com­pe­tent hands of a coach whose ul­ti­mate con­cern lies with the over­all bet­ter­ment of the play­ers un­der his tute­lage.

Coach Dion is al­ways will­ing to de­vel­op those who are com­mit­ted to pur­su­ing their in­ter­ests in foot­ball, so if you or some­one you know has what it takes to be a good stu­dent of the game or an ex­em­plary youth coach, La Fou­cade Soc­cer Clin­ic would be my rec­om­men­da­tion to un­cov­er any po­ten­tial. Chil­dren start as young as four years of age, and coach­es can be as young as 18 years. Once the com­mit­ment is there, you will be amazed at how much you will learn and be ex­posed to while work­ing along­side some­one like Coach Dion La Fou­cade.