Nam Football Association unveils new player tracking system

THE Namibia Football Association (NFA) unveiled the new Players Registration and Competitions System that will be used to keep track of Namibian football players.

Tunisian based Narsil Technologies, through the “Win in Africa with Africa” initiative from Fifa that seeks to provide African football associations with the tools to progress and the skills with which it can continue its own development, developed the system.
The NFA Secretary General, Barry Rukoro, said that the new system would enable the association to have information on its players.
“It will enable us to have the data on all the stakeholders of Namibian football,” Rukoro said.
“The system can also be used outside the operations of football. We will be able to assist the nation whenever the need arises,” Rukoro continued.
The Sales and Marketing Manager of Narsil Technologies, Khalil Mahjoub said that most African football associations did not have such systems.
“In African countries, data bases of players are non existent. As a result there is a lot of age cheating that goes on undetected,” Mahjoub said.
“There are also always a lot of problems with identifying players during international matches. Sometimes there are doubts about whether a player is really from the country that he is representing and this system will be able to prove such things.”
“The system will also be able to keep useful statistics on players, for example one will be able to find out how many left footed players there are in the country,” Mahjoub added.
Jakes Amaning, coordinator of Youth Development Football in the NFA, was happy with the new system because it would minimise age cheating that has rocked African football in recent years.
“We would be able to capture the information of every player who plays football for the NFA. In the long term we will be working with the NSSU (Namibia Schools Sports Union) to be able to get the information at an earlier stage in the players life,” Amaning said.
The Namibian Premier League fs (NPL) Windhoek teams will be the first to register their players using the system.
Namibia is the 19th country in Africa to adopt the system and the third in the southern Africa after Mozambique and Tanzania. – namibiasport.com.na

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