World Cup lives on in the streets
NATASHA PRINCE
Staff Reporter
MANENBERG’S young soccer talent got a headstart for the Kia Street Soccer League, due to kick off later tomorrow, when pupils from Edendale Primary and Manenberg Primary played against each other in a pre-tournament practice session.
The tournament, which will run for nine weeks, was introduced last year during the World Cup, capturing the imagination of the Fifa organisers, who were adamant it should continue.
Brad Bing, from youth sports development agency Sporting Chance, which hosts the event, explained that the aim was to sustain interest in soccer at school level.
Event partners include the SA Football Association (Safa), Fifa and the PSL.
“If we can do projects like this where kids will want to go to school to play sport, then we would have reached our objective,” said Bing.
Tournaments will also take place in Port Elizabeth, Joburg, Pretoria and Durban.
The street soccer experience was pitched as a means of getting children off the streets, away from drugs and crime, and keeping them occupied, while promoting healthy living, positive values, and health education.
Bing said about 800 coaches had been contracted nationally for the project.
Locally, games will be played in a round robin format in the streets of Manenberg, Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha, Grassy Park, Athlone, Langa and Nyanga.
Whichever team emerges victorious after the round robin stage will go on to play at regional level, being named the overall winner for Cape Town.
Each team has six players, five of whom play in the side, with one acting as a substitute. Each team must include two girls, one of whom must be on the field for the duration of each game.
Teams can enter as either street or primary school teams.
As a special incentive for the players, Ajax soccer stars are set to be on the sidelines during the tournaments, monitoring the games and scouting for talent. Selected players will be invited to Ajax trials in the coming months.
Yesterday Ajax central defender Clayton Daniels, 26, jostled his way through the determined young players in Manenberg.
Daniels said he felt at home on the streets as that was where he had often played soccer as a child growing up in Bishop Lavis.
“It usually starts in the streets, before they’ll start playing at club level. That is why I enjoy doing this. I know where they are coming from,” he said.
Each area has a co-co-ordinator to sort out the logistics of the games. In Manenberg there are 20 teams with 20 coaches, said Cyril Pelston, the area’s co-ordinator.
He said the project had already yielded positive results and that children who showed signs of talent were encouraged to join local sports clubs.
“It is something positive for the pupils,” Pelston said, adding that the children revelled in the excitement of the game at primary school level, but often dropped out when they reached high school.
Yesterday’s pre-tournament was to “get the children in the vibe” before the weekend.
Hilton Lombard, a teacher at Manenberg Primary, said school sport in general had deteriorated in the area in the years running up to the World Cup.
“In fact, we had no soccer in Manenberg before then, so this really is a positive thing.”