Coaches laud academies’ role

Zimpapers Sports Hub

DOMESTIC coaches have saluted the leading role taken by local academies to identify and nurture talent at an elite level to standards that have even attracted the attention of some top European football clubs.

A host of coaches, headlined by CAPS United gaffer Lloyd Chitembwe spent the day at Legends Football Academy’s base at Hellenic Sports Club for a youth festival that featured budding talent from Under-7 to Under-13, competing in a Five-A-Side tourney.

Chitembwe and his colleagues, who included former Black Rhinos defender Ignatius Kapitapita, Polish club Legia Warsaw, legend Dickson Choto, ex-ZIFA Normalisation Committee member Skhumbuzo Ndebele and the parents and family members, who came to support, were impressed with what they saw.

“I just want to take this opportunity to appreciate the good work obviously by Legends Football Academy for taking this initiative, I think it is really good for the young boys to compete amongst themselves and at the same time showcase their skills . . . It is only good for development and it was a worthwhile experience for me to be here,” Chitembwe said.

Chitembwe added that the festival reignited memories of his young days in Chitungwiza and challenged ZIFA to take a cue from the schools of excellence.

“We started at this age, Under-8, Under-17, just trying to create the interest because at eight years you wouldn’t know that you are going to be a top player, a top star but what is important is trying to discover yourself and develop more and more interest up until you get to 15 and 17 that’s where you start to see more opportunities and you start to take yourself more seriously,” Chitembwe said.

Kapitapita, now coaching at BN Academy, also weighed in with his thoughts.

“These are good tournaments. Young generations are being lost to drugs and other vices, so these kinds of tournaments help kids to focus on sport instead of being idle.

“During our time we played a lot of football and junior leagues would feed players into the national teams and I am happy that this is what the academies are fulfilling now.

“Of course, it is not easy coaching young players but it needs a lot of push, passion, and patience,” Kapitapita said.

Last Saturday’s Five-A-Side tourney for the youngest of the age group brackets capped a busy month during which Legends Academy first jointly hosted an Under-17 tournament with ex-Arcadia United and Warriors defender Allan Johnson on August 4. On August 11 Legends received the Under-19 teams while the Under-15 players converged at the same venue for their edition seven days later.

Former Highlanders defender Ndebele, who until recently was part of the FIFA-appointed Normalisation Committee running ZIFA, underscored the significant role that academies have been playing in bridging the gap created by the abandonment of junior development programmes on the part of the association.

“Naturally I would say for me coming here and watching the kids grow with the game, it’s passion and it is one of the best things that can be encouraged at any given point,” Ndebele said.

“This needs to be replicated across the breadth of the country, we need it in Mutare, we need it in Beitbridge, we need it in Binga.

“And also, we love it when we have parents being involved in the development of their kids. You know where parents are involved a lot of favourable decisions are arrived at in a short space of time and that is what we want.

“Amongst the top priorities that we should encourage is that the Under-7 that I am seeing being pushed here is where we should start to interact with the game and kids should come here not to compete but to have fun and have relationships with the game.

“The biggest challenge we have in Africa is that our players have little time with the game, average I think as Zimbabwe we are hitting 200 hours and that is not enough . . . professionals need at least 3 000 hours of football.

“Starting at this age is something we should encourage, not for making money but to make it embedded in family occasions like what Dhliwayo and his team are doing,” Ndebele said.

Legends Academy director Farai Dhliwayo said hosting a month-long of tournaments and the huge turnout of different academies was testimony that “football development at the elite level is alive”.

“ZIFA and especially the FIFA Forward have a daunting task of figuring out development at the national level where the structures are dead because of decades of non-investment,” Dhliwayo said.

“At the elite level, people have invested in their academies and football is thriving.

“So, in the short-term, the next generation of talent is going to come from the elite academies because right now ZIFA are only trying to get through to the schools by donating footballs, and yet they have not invested in the training of the teachers that are going to be the coaches.

“The advantage of the academies is that they run throughout the year and their cadets are not limited to football only in the second term.

“Academies are also able to hire professionals, who also have a passion for the game and not teachers in charge”.

The academies have done well to attract interest from top European clubs like Real Betis, FC Porto, Everton, and elite clubs in the United States and China.

Dhliwayo acknowledged as much.

“This is a clear indication that the big European teams believe there is talent worth investing in Zimbabwe”.