Romanian Football Federation on track with implementing Rinus
At the end of February, the Romanian Football Federation (FRF) signed a partnership with the KNVB for the implementation of Rinus Football. Now, 8 months later, Rinus Football talked with Vlad Munteanu, FRF Operational Manager National Teams. In his role as Projectmanager, Munteanu is responsible for the implementation of Rinus. How is Rinus working out for the FRF and the Romanian football?
FRF decided to join in a partnership with Rinus Football, the coach development tool of KNVB. Why did you choose Rinus?
Munteanu: “The reasons behind our partnership with the Royal Netherlands Football Association are mainly based on the long-lasting collaboration and the development programs run by them in grassroots area and youth development.”
“The structure of Rinus was something that we were looking for and it just needed from our side to add the Romanian football philosophy principles and our context in terms of infrastructure and level of education of our coaches.”
As of January 2022, you started with the implementation of the tool. What did it ask from your federation in terms of involving people, developing marketing material, training coaches, et cetera?
“One of the projects from the pillar Education from our Technical Strategy speaks about developing a training methodology age related for youth development. After choosing Rinus, we had to start build up an implementation plan, starting with the proper Human Resources, name, content, KPI’s and much more.”
“The main task after that was to appoint a methodologist for the platform, who has to be responsible for the vision of our technical strategy within the use of the platform by our coaches. After that we have started working internally for the name of the platform, design, translation, how to present it better to all youth coaches and much more.”
You choose to name it FRF coach. Why?
“Choosing the name was the easiest thing, since we just had to bring together some key words and try to find the best and easiest way for coaches to recognize the platform and talk about it. And is an FRF project addressed to the coach, so FRF Coach.”
How long did it take to properly implement Rinus before launching the app?
“From the day we signed the contract and the launch of the app, we need it some good 8 months. We could have done it earlier, but we didn’t want to rush things and do, for example, the translations properly. Of course, the support of team Rinus in this period was key for our development.”
You had a clear idea about launching FRF Coach, starting in Bucharest and then introducing it to the rest of the country. Can you tell us something about how you launched FRF Coach?
“The launch took place in Bucharest, on 7th of July 2022, at theFRF HQ, it had brought more than 130 coaches at youth level, and it was a huge success. But we have everything all planned out and used our resources on delivering a top event.”
“The key successful factor was the connection before the event with the participants through phone calls or emails and the content of the presentation, run by the Football Coaching School manager, Mr. Burchel, me as a project manager and Tudor Palade, platform Methodist.”
In three months’ time you had over 1200 coaches using FRF Coach. What are your ambitions or targets in case of Romanian coaches using the tool?
“At this moment, after 115 days from launching the app, FRF Coach, has about 1800 users and the first KPI is for the end of the year to reach 2000 user.”
“In Romania we have approximately 7k coaches and our main objective is to reach a minimum of users of 80% of this number. Another KPI is to retain the users on the platform and work on a daily basic or 2/3 times a week.”
How did you experience the cooperation with team Rinus Football?
“The support of team Rinus was from day one at top level and even though during the process we encountered some issues, we have overcome them together through collaboration and new approaches for the situations created.”
What would your recommendation be for other federations who are considering partnering with Rinus Football?
“Taking into consideration that in the future digitalization will take on a bigger role in the life of a coach, it might already happened, I strongly recommend the use of such platform, because it will make the process of development easier and the use of the tool is a win for the coach and academy, having the player development in the center of their strategy.”
“At the same time, I strongly disagree with a copy / paste system, because each country has its own specificity and DNA, so it is important to know first what you want and then go in that direction with the right tools, such as Rinus.”