POPA Meets with the Communist Party of Greece (KKE)

Theodoris Liapis, head of the Physical Education and Sports Department of the KKE Central Committee, met today with a delegation from the Hellenic Federation of Sports Coaches and Trainers (POPA).

POPA Meets with the Sports Department of the KKE Central Committee

Theodoris Liapis, head of the Physical Education and Sports Department of the KKE Central Committee, met today with a POPA delegation. POPA was founded in 2010 to organise and coordinate coaches’ activities across all sports around their shared problems. Its members include coaches’ associations for sailing, swimming, weightlifting, canoe-kayak, badminton, fencing, cycling, boxing, skiing and water skiing, tennis, archery and athletes with disabilities.

Calling for Recognition of the Profession

The delegation, comprising President Athanasios Villiotis, First Vice President Konstantinos Tournavitis and General Secretary Dimitris Stefanidis, presented POPA’s views and positions on the major issues facing the profession and sport.

POPA’s central demand is recognition of the coaching profession to safeguard the rights to employment, insurance and a pension. Thousands of coaches working in different sports, clubs and federations are not paid regularly, or receive payment as travel expenses, and work without insurance. POPA therefore stressed the need to check the legal qualifications of coaches employed by clubs and national teams, and to establish unified coaching regulations.

The delegation also raised the need to establish a National Coaching School as a higher education institution. Currently, in some cases, such as football, university-qualified coaches must sit federation examinations to obtain a coaching diploma.

KKE Expresses Support

Theodoris Liapis expressed the party’s support for coaches’ main demands, noting that KKE had already raised several of these issues. He reiterated KKE’s position that, given young people’s attitudes towards physical education and sport and the resulting effects on their health, improving the standard of coaching in clubs should be a continuing responsibility of the state. He also pledged that KKE would support the profession’s demands through every appropriate means, both in Parliament and through wider collective action.