The Sunday News
Talking Football with Zenzo Moyo
Back to basics: The development of junior football needs to attend to a glaring disconnect that is be-devilling talent harnessing ability.
The History: Back in the days we had early hours of street football in our line.
We then would aggregate later to turn out for the suburb challenge select at the youth centre.
On selected weekends we would strive to represent the community team at special tournaments held especially during the school holidays.
Local premier football club scouts would litter the tournament as they look for the next big talent.
A few lucky stars would get a dream call to turn up for local clubs in the premiership or Zifa lower divisions.
Zifa
Youth centres and recreation spaces as Key sporting infrastructure: Key recreation spaces and youth centres provided vital and key elements for physical development and athlete conditioning then.
The youth centre programmes protected the youth from the vile and temptations of drug and substance abuse as the competitions kept the minds focussed and busy.
It is crucial to mention the ultimate and pivotal social protection role these city council recreation facilities and youth centres play in our communities as we purposed to be professional football players of the coming century.
These were at the time our equivalent of today’s global high tech and high-performance centres.
And truly they delivered top class athletes we call Legends today.
The roadmap: The football mantra is to rethink, redefine, repossess, reposition, to remain rewarded.
We say to our football Gods today, in nostalgia we seek to return to roots and find refuge in back to basics.
Football talent just like any successful storyline is very predictable in years ahead.
FIFA schools programmes has launched in Africa and that being telling spotlights the pathways needing our investment and development.
The talent progression pathway: 1: home line kick about. 2: community centre football. 3: local schools football. 4: National Association Junior Football. 5: Professional club football.
Youth Character building: Our schools in the process have failed us too.
The institutions of learning have lingered solely and heavily on the academic excellence suffering the social intelligence character building programs such as sports.
Many youths who may feel are not academia inclined, tend to get frustrated out of the learner ship wits or self-actualization owing to this alphabetic and numeric bias.
Football and sports in general bring self-confidence and at times wealth in spaces where academia fails.
Schools do not have a football calendar anymore and many have been lost to drugs.
Some schools view football as a sport for dunderheads.
They choose to promote low hanging alternative sports such as cricket, hockey, tennis, rugby during the school terms.
Yet football is a economic game changer and not only an industry.
For example, when Marvelous Nakamba wants to develop a hotel, he employs engineers, builders, surveyors, project management team and finance minds, et al.
Such can be the power of football.
