Hiring foreign coaches

There was a recent call aired by parents of the country’s leading and promising players for hiring foreign coaches to improve the competitiveness of their prized wards. Well, let me give my humble opinion on it.

Hiring foreign coaches does not necessarily mean NOT hiring local coaches.

NCFP can hire foreign coaches while at the same time use the expertise of local coaches. It’s some sort of augmentation, or complementation. What the foreign coaches couldn’t provide, their local counterparts could, and vice-versa.

As for some caution, something ‘foreign’ does not necessarily mean something ‘better.’ .
Hiring foreign coaches CANNOT guarantee better results. Haven’t we freed ourselves from the colonial mentality that if something is ‘imported,’ then it must be good?

But although the move cannot guarantee positive results, it could guarantee one thing: the un-Filipinized mindset about chess improvement and development.

Well, what do I mean exactly by the term un-Filipinized?

Let’s say we have a Filipino coach who has been in the circle for long, long years already. Of course, he already saw the smiles and grins of parents and players. Sometimes, he liked the smile of one parent over the smile of another parent. For years, the exchanges of smiles could have deeply rooted that they view the smiles of others as grins.

Got what I mean? And that’s just one area of so many to consider!

But with a foreign coach who is new to the whole system, something different could possibly happen. He might select players based on actual merits, and not on smiles and grins (let’s just pray that the coach would be independent-minded, somebody who would not just bow to the wishes of NFCP people).

Hiring foreign coaches matches the leadership style of NCFP president Pichay. Barako! The move could lead to removing players from the national pool who are not really deserving to be there.

Who knows, the hiring of a foreign coach could lead to something unexpected, let’s say a reformed Philippine chess landscape?