SD Eibar promote joint working programme between first-team coaching staff and academy coaches
The Denok Bat project is now up and running and sees the first-team and youth set-ups join forces
The Denok Bat project launched by SD Eibar aims to see the first-team coaching staff and the academy coaches come together to share knowledge and work together in this joint venture.
The project represents a new and pioneering initiative amongst top-flight clubs and is promoted by the SD Eibar Foundation, the management of the club's academy and its methodology department.
Since the project's launch, youth-team coaches have been taking it in turns to spend a week with the first-team coaching staff, where they have been involved in daily training sessions and have acquired first-hand knowledge.
The Denok Bat scheme is intended to bring the first-team ranks and the youth set-up closer together, whilst promoting self-knowledge and bringing the different areas that make up the football department, right from the early stages to the first team, into closer contact, all with a view to establishing a common working framework.
In the words of SD Eibar Urko first-team coach, Ander Trebiño, "The experience has been a really positive one, it has allowed us not only to improve professionally, but also to develop as individuals alongside José Luis Mendilibar's coaching staff, learning from their modesty and down-to-earth approach and all about the importance they give to interpersonal relationships".
Fernando Iturbe, the coordinator of the club's methodology and internal teams, offered his view on the coaches' participation in the scheme. "The commitment to training our coaches is a key element in the increasing importance being given to improving the methodology of our youth set-up. The Denok Bat project serves to narrow the gap between the youth and professional football ranks through a two-way process of learning and self-knowledge".
The SD Eibar Foundation aims not only to provide training for over 250 boys and girls who make up the club's youth set-up, but also to act as a training centre for coaches.
The Denok Bat project, which seeks to contribute towards this objective, is one of this season's flagship schemes, along with the official coaching courses being run by the Gipuzkoan Football Federation at the club's Ipurua Training Centre.