The World Coaches Programme of the Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) began at the ANFA Complex at Satdobato on Monday.

Dutch all-time World Cup hero Johan Neeskens performed a demonstration training session with his colleague Bert Zuurman to kick off the International Coaching and Life Skills Programme, which is being held in Nepal for the first time. Zuurman worked for almost five years in India as coach and education director at the Ozone Academy in Bangalore.

As many as 30 coaches are participating in the six-day training at the ANFA ground.

Neeskens, who has been associated with the World Coaches Programme since 2012, is considered as one of the greatest midfielders of all time. The former Ajax Amsterdam and Barcelona player was a key member of the Dutch football team that finished runners-up in the 1974 and 1978 FIFA World Cups and was the first Dutch player to score in a World Cup final.

Ambassador for the Netherlands to Nepal, Marten van den Berg, also joined the course.

Neeskeens underscores that the youth all over the world needs to be trained by well-educated coaches, who not only look at the performance on the field, but also care about the well-being of the children and about the guidance off the field as well. He said he was very happy to come to Nepal.

Johan van Geijn, founder of World Coaches, who has been working at KNVB since 1998 stressed that children can be made aware of healthy lifestyles and taught social skills through football and that will eventually benefit them in all aspects of their life.

Since the initiation of the World Coaches Programme in 2010, more than 16,000 coaches from across 65 countries have joined the programme, with almost 30 percent of them being female coaches.