Mosimane eager to help little kids enjoy soccer

In a country where football development is talked about with alarming regularity, but of which little is done, Pitso Mosimane is proving to be a man of his word.

Last weekend, Mosimane could be found among hundreds of young boys and girls as his schools initiative – named Pitso Mosimane Soccer Schools (PMSS) – took to Curro Meridian Cosmo City in the west of Johannesburg, in what was the start of his collaboration with the private schools company to fast track kids into the beautiful game.

Mosimane has always been an ambitious man, and he’s typically set lofty aims to see his dream fulfilled. “My vision is to one day own a real school – a building housing kids who will specialise in football but also excel academically,” said the revered coach, who this week started his new job at Al Wahda in the UAE.

He’s busy laying the foundation towards that dream, having founded PMSS last year and forging ahead with sporadic events as they find their feet.

His PMSS programme employed over 40 coaches last year, and they have to coach according to Mosimane’s methods which, he says, were compiled from what he learnt from similar development programmes abroad.

“I got the development manuals from Spain, Germany, the United States and England. Spain has always produced the best young talent. In Germany I studied how they produced the team that eventually won the World Cup in 2014 – which included the likes of [Mario] Gotze, [Toni] Kroos and Sami Khedira. I also made my own input to finally produce a curriculum for PMSS.”

Mosimane’s programme starts with six-year-olds – and the aim is clear: do not overwhelm kids. “Kids must just play…enjoy touching the ball. So to do that, you get age-appropriate fields and balls. This is what is done throughout the world. Kids cannot be running on a full-length pitch because some won’t even get to touch the ball. If you have six-year-olds, make them play on a small field in a three v three situation.”

The programme also includes nutrition, a key component towards developing future stars. “We have to teach them about packing the right snack in a lunch box. You must have protein and carbohydrates to help you exercise. And that way the kid won’t be obese. Just a basic snack of brown bread with peanut butter, juice and a fruit, can go a long way,” Mosimane said.

Predictably, his biggest challenge has been funding, but for a man who has for the past three years preferred to earn a salary in dollars in the Middle East, instead of the SA rand, having coached Egypt’s Al Ahly and Ahli Saudi Arabia, Mosimane is well prepared to dig deep in his pocket to see the success of the project.

“This costs a lot of money, of course. I have to pay salaries to nearly 50 coaches every month and we don’t have a sponsor. Fortunately I have a partnership with Curro, and they pay the coaches a portion, while I also chip in. I have the buy-in from Safa through their technical director [Walter] Steenbok, who also helps lecturing our coaches to bring them in alignment with the programme. We are not in any way an opposition to Safa, whose mandate is development. We are merely helping them.”

From the programme, Mosimane is not merely looking for footballers of tomorrow. Rather, he yearns to see every kid equipped with a skill they can excel in, just as it happens at Barcelona’s La Masia, where kids enroll for football but depart the famed academy with advantageous life benefits.

“Football is not just on the pitch. We have marketers, finance people, player managers, medical people, stadium developers and so on. Those who are good enough will of course make it to the professional levels but we want to give kids skills they can specialise in around the game.”