The Badge Bottleneck: Six Years to a Licence
Course places have not grown with demand, and the queue is now long enough that clubs are appointing coaches who cannot legally sit on the bench.
GLOBAL, 23 AUG — The elite licence takes between four and six years to obtain in most federations, not because the syllabus is four years long — it is roughly two hundred contact hours — but because the courses run once a year with twenty-four places.
The rationing has a defensible origin. Assessment is in person, mentors are scarce, and a federation that issues licences too freely devalues its own certificate. It also, unavoidably, decides who gets to have a career.
The workaround has become routine. A club appoints a coach without the badge and names a licensed member of staff on the teamsheet. Everyone involved knows what the arrangement is. Several federations have stopped pretending otherwise and formalised it as a dispensation.
Two federations have moved assessment online for the first two levels and cut the queue by half. The elite level, where the bottleneck actually binds, remains untouched.
- licensing
- pathways
- federations