A very high level of promising football talent identified in Namibia has prompted one of the world’s leading football academies to begin the establishment of a permanent talent scouting and development structure in the country.
World Wide Scholarships (WWS), an organisation which seeks to link African sporting talent with career opportunities abroad, embarked on its African Italia Soccer Showcase earlier this year, in partnership with Lombardia Uno AC Milan Technical Centre and Italia Calcio Coaching.
These trials provide a platform for young African athletes to showcase their talent, and the recent event in Windhoek saw eight young footballers identified as potential candidates for European trials and 35 identified as potential candidates for scholarship linking opportunities with universities and colleges in the USA.
These numbers were higher than initially expected, leading to WWS opening partnership discussions with Namibian youth football club, Ramblers Sport Club.
“Ramblers has proudly entered into a ten-year development memorandum of understanding with WWS. We are ecstatic to be paving the way for Namibian talent to be developed in, through some of the most tried and tested methodologies in preparation for the world’s most lucrative and top level leagues. We believe Namibian talent has been sorely under-appreciated for years and are very pleased that it will now be recognised through our collaboration with WWS and its partners,” said Sedrick van Turah, chairman of Ramblers Sport Club.
“We cannot wait for the day that one of our promising youngsters takes the field for one of the world’s biggest football clubs. That will create a very positive cycle of kids dreaming big in this country because the development pipeline will be established,” Van Turah added.
Through the ten-year partnership, WWS Academy will be coaching tactical and technical skills at an international top professional standard, with resident international coaches supplied from Italia Calcio Coaching running programmes supported by local coaches.
“It’s not just the youth talent who will benefit from this. Having seasoned European coaches from ICC and systems in place supported by local coaches will undoubtedly feed through into Namibian talent development at a broader level, raising the bar for all clubs in the domestic and regional leagues,” says Munya Maraire, CEO of WWS.
The collaboration will bring with it world-class talent identification, assessments and trials, coach education and certification, academy and soccer school training tournaments and youth experiences.
“With WWS involved, global university placement services will now be brought to Namibia’s doorstep. The talent has always been here, but with this partnership the country’s young athletes will have a much better chance of making the grade professionally in the world’s top leagues. It will truly level the playing field, and we expect big things to come from the partnership with Ramblers,” says Maraire.
WWS will be running a trials event at Ramblers FC to launch the relationship in conjunction with the annual Ramblers FC Family Day, for interested top players tomorrow and on Sunday, from 09h00 to 12h00.
Based on the partnership the club name will be changing to WWS – O&L Ramblers Soccer Academy.
