WORLD Wide Scholarships, a multifaceted global sports, art, and academics organisation, hosted its first-ever soccer scouting trials at SKW in Windhoek over the past week.
According to its website, WWS is the largest university placement agency in the African region, while they aim to empower local talent by linking scholars to international colleges and universities that match their talents and abilities.
Close to 150 children from all over Namibia, between 10 and 21 years of age, attended trials which were conducted by WWS’s technical director of soccer, Les Grobler, and Amedeo Mangone, an Italian coach.
Grobler said he has a close link with Namibia.
“I’ve been to Namibia quite a few times. I was the head of development at Highlands Park and I got to know Peter Shalulile, Larry Horaeb, Denzil Haoseb and a few other players that were in Namibia’s national team at the time. So I travel to Namibia quite extensively to watch them, especially when they play for the national team,” he said.
“Peter Shalulile in particular, and now Deon Hotto, are now doing very well, but I’ve been saying for a long time that Namibians have something which South Africans lack. Namibians generally are very quick and they’ve got good stamina. Then you have the German contingent as well, and now you’ve got size and strength, so I’ve always been saying that Namibia for me has been a sleeping giant in football, because of what they have,” he added.
“So that’s why the first time that I’ve been down to Southern Africa with World Wide Scholarships was to Namibia because of the passion that I have here and also from what I see. I’m very excited because what we’ve had over the last week has been very good,” he said.
Grobler said he was confident that some of the payers could get scholarships.
“It’s not a case of if any of them will get a scholarship, there will certainly be quite a few of them that can get scholarships. So what awaits them is depending what they want to study.
Besides scholarships, the WWS can also link talented young players up with clubs in South Africa and abroad.
“Some of the players are of professional quality, so we need to see if we can link them now to a professional team in South Africa or overseas. So the cherry on top will be overseas, the second prize a PSL contract to a club in SA and the third prize and by no means a bad prize, a scholarship in the US,” Grobler said.
Mangone said they would try and find opportunities for the talented youngsters.
Ït has been a positive experience for me and I’m here to see what I can do with the boys and to see what chances I can get them around the world.
We have connections with coaches all over the world to try and find future players and they collaborated with WWS to come to Africa to try and find future talent,” he said.
He, however, was a bit more guarded about his assessment of the players.
”There are some interesting players here, but it’s a process to create a programme to improve them, because there is room for improvement to see how far they can get.”
