Penza, 10 March 2015. PenzaNews. Alexei Kazantsev, head coach of the American Football team “Penza Phoenixes,” for the first time took part in the IFAF Europe annual coach training seminar that took place in Copenhagen.

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The Penza representative was included in the court committee of the Russian Federation of American Football during the main AF coaching event.

“IFAF Europe is a branch of the International Federation of American Football in Europe. 110 coaches from nearly 20 countries arrived to the three-day seminar, and each national federation was able to bring only five or seven representatives based on the number of playing local teams,” Alexei Kazantsev told PenzaNews agency.

Apart from him, Russia was also represented by four coaches from Moscow, he noted.

“The seminar was a so-called ‘officiating clinic’ annually held for the European coaches. The courses were mostly dedicated to game mechanics, coaching philosophy and rule application, game ethics, and certain game moments. We also discussed new technical possibilities, rating system of European coaches and minimums for coaching over international matches,” said the speaker.

Among the people who addressed the seminar participants was an NFL coach Carl Cheffers who has been working with the league for 5 years and worked as a replacemeng coach for the Super Bowl twice, Alexei Kazantsev added.

“The technical equipment of the seminar was top-notch. Each one had a special control panel that allowed voting on various questions very effectively without raising hands. The results were instantly calculated and displayed as a statistic on the screen. There were separate courses on positioning, that were held in other rooms allocated in the hotel,” said Alexei Kazantsev, adding that he was appointed the person responsible for contacts between the Russian American Football coaches and IFAF.

Describing the development level of American Football in Russia, the Penza team head coach stressed that its state in Russia leaves much to be desired compared to many other countries.

“There are many American players and coaches in Europe, the teams have sponsors, the matches are shown on TV. I think that is because of the slightly higher living quality compared to Russia. People can allocate more time for hobby, for sports, pool more resources into equipment and matches. Besides, more tightly-packed cities decrease match expenses. Moreover, plenty of them know and understand English fairly well: they only need to delve into the rules and the game,” said the “Penza Phoenixes” head coach.

Despite all that, according to him, American Football in Europe is still not as popular as some other sports.