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Tadious Manyepo
Zimpapers Sports Hub
ONE of the major stakeholders in the local sport ecosystem, the Sports Leaders Institute of Zimbabwe feel that long-term athlete development should dominate football discourse at any level.
SLIZ president Russel Maradza Mhiribidi said overlooking the systematic long-term development has for long been Zimbabwe’s undoing at international level.
Mhiribidi said the country needs a deliberate plan to ensure that budding footballers get the requisite exposure as dictated by modern sports science.
He reckoned that the new ZIFA leadership to be voted in office tomorrow should carry this on top of their minds.
“The kind of leadership that our football needs to progress is those who are development-oriented. We are talking about people who can champion that cause.
“Without a firm foundation, our football will not prosper. We want candidates who have development at heart, candidates that understand everything football and are results-driven.
“We want candidates that understand long-term athlete development over and above all the other facets. There can never be proper development without taking long-term athlete development into cognisance,” said Mhiribidi.
He added:
“The issue where our football has been a term sport should be a thing of the past because you get certain children losing a chance to develop their football skills because if their schools are knocked out in the zonal phase of the competition, that means they would have done only three weeks of football training.
“Yet long-term athlete development dictates that athletes in any sport should have at least 10 000 hours of interaction with equipment to become properly developed.
“We want leadership that can convince the powers that be, that is Naph and Nash, to let the children play football throughout the year.”
SLIZ’s position resonates well with one of the candidates seeking an executive member post in the upcoming election-Tafadzwa Benza.
The Herentals chairman reckons that he will use his connections in the education system and be able to convince both Naph and Nash to let schools play football all-year-round. Benza is the chief operating officer for Herentals Group of Schools and Colleges and has since introduced that philosophy across all the 60-plus Herentals centres across the country.
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter