Pitso impressed as schools project takes shape

It has been 18 months since Pitso Mosimane launched his schools programme, aimed at growing SA’s football development base, and he’s thus far impressed with how it has transformed.

“We started with two schools, now we have 20 schools on the programme,” said Mosimane at Curro Meridian Cosmo City at the weekend.

He partnered with the private school's company two years ago. “This school [Curro Meridian] was our first school to run our pilot project. The principal [Maud Langa] accepted us because she saw a need for football to be the main sport at this school. We also got Northern Academy from Limpopo, but over the past 18 months we’ve seen our vision spread even further.”

Mosimane has employed more than 50 coaches to run the programme in the schools, which have both girls and boys teams.

While impressed with the expansion of the programme, he has cautioned he won’t bite more than he can chew. “You can’t be all over, we must grow steadily. You can’t have big numbers where you don’t have capacity.”

Mosimane’s schools hire former footballers as coaches, but they must have a Safa D licence, a police clearance and a basic training on first-aid.

“When a child has an illness or suffers injury, the coach must know how to handle that. With the Safa licence, we are grateful to Walter Steenbok [Safa technical director] because he has been running courses which are beneficial to our coaches. Ex-players should not be staying at home saying they don’t have a job. They can start here and work their way up,” he said.

Mosimane’s long-term vision is to open a boarding school in the mould of Safa’s Esselen Park-based School of Excellence, which is renowned for producing some of the country’s top talent.

“For a country as big as ours, we can’t just have one School of Excellence, we should have one in each province. My aim is to establish a boarding school which would excel in academics and football, and help export talent. Brazil exports more than 1,000 players every year, so we must have that vision as a country.

"We have schools which produce so many rugby players but we rely on only one School of Excellence for football, that can’t be right. I’m turning 60 this year and I want to leave a legacy. I don’t want to be remembered as someone who won the Top 8 twice.”

- The Pitso Mosimane Soccer Camps will be taking place from July 1 to 5 and are open to boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 15. The camps take place in Boksburg, Roodepoort's Allen Glen High School and Mamelodi's Rethabile Mini Sports Grounds. Registration is at pitsomosimanesoccerschools.co.za