Meet El Gouna Football Club’s New Coach
Gouna News was fortunate to have found Mr Pedro Barny, the incoming coach for the El Gouna Football Club, sitting at Seventh Star Cafe on the El Gouna marina, and was able to conduct an amiable chat with him.
Coach Pedro, who hails from Portugal, once played stopper for Sporting Lisboa FC, Belenenses and Boavista Football clubs. Now 53 years old he has accepted the position of head coach, training the El Gouna Football Club first team, located at El Bustan in El Gouna. Pedro was offered this position in December 2019 after the departure of 47 year old coach Nebojsa Milosovic of Serbia. Pedro is no stranger to Egypt, having successfully coached Al Ismaily FC in their 2017-2018 football season, reaching second place, and qualifying for the African Champions League.
Today Pedro Barny will be trying to improve El Gouna FC fortunes, in what remains of the 2019-2020 season. They are currently placed twelfth in the Egyptian Premier League standings out of 18 clubs competing. This unfortunately has resulted in a blow to their self confidence, which their new coach plans to address.
In our discussion, Gouna News learned that coach Pedro is married with four children. They will remain in Portugal since the children’s school year had already started.
As we discussed personal coaching styles, we learned that coach Pedro wishes his team to entertain fans by presenting an attacking style with focus on goal scoring. He was able to describe the complexities of coaching, where many variables and considerations play a part. It is like a chess game where all pieces, on both sides, are moving all at once.
That is why, El Gouna FC practices nearly every day. While video and statistics play a part in training for a match, there is no substitution for gut feel, experience and observation. Even the translator provided to the coach is disfavoured and often replaced by hand signals, eye to eye and physical contact to get the message across.
Coach Pedro showed me the latest technology available on his smart phone. It is an app that gathers data on every player in every club from every match of the Egyptian Premier League. The data is gathered from devices on the players undershirts that relay to a GPS system every move made by the player. Subsequently, the software can track distance covered, passes completed, ball acquisition time,....etc. However, these stats can be interpreted in many different ways and can cloud decision making and therefore only used in special cases.
We asked Coach Pedro about his favourite teams and players. He admitted being biased to teams with Portuguese stars such as Ronaldo, Bernardo Silva or Moutinho. Otherwise his favourite team would have to be Liverpool and their stopper Virgil Van Dyk, who he says has a strong presence and influence on the Liverpool defensive line.
Coach Pedro is happy to be training El Gouna FC. He says the club and management have been good to him. He has found everyone to be nice and supportive. He was also full of praise for the beautiful town of El Gouna, which has impressed him very much.
We wish Coach Pedro Barny an enjoyable stay in our town and wish the team well in their upcoming matches. You can find the schedule of upcoming matches in the following Table
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