The Top Coaches Programme took place this past week at Club Junior 1917 in Sant Cugat, Spain, bringing together the group for the first time in 2024.

The Top Coaches Programme is EuroHockey’s highest-level coaching programme and is designed to support coaches who want to work at an elite level within the game.

Backed by the FIH Academy, the course gives coaches the opportunity to expand their knowledge, prove theirs skills and earn the FIH Level 4 Coaching Certification.

This being the first seminar of the year, first year coaches focused on presenting their principles both in and out of possession, as well as their own aspirations as a coach.

For second year coaches, they focused on offensive principles in areas such as creating overload, combatting man to man defence, and exploiting the baseline.

The mentor team, led by EuroHockey coaching committee lead Michel Kinnen, included mentors Jules Halls, Sofie Gierts and Ghazanfar Ali. The mentors put forward their thoughts through the general topics, and covered areas such as how to produce a high-performance culture and how to adapt in-game strategies.

The coaches also had the pleasure of having a local perspective from guest speakers Marc Sanz, Andreu Enrich and Xavi Arnau as well as an opportunity to speak with EuroHockey President Marcos Hofmann.

EuroHockey would like to thank the Club Junior for its hospitality and for helping to make this seminar a vital learning experience for the coaches on the programme.

** Find out more about the Top Coaches Programme here: https://eurohockey.org/programme-session/top-coaches-programme-tcp