England calling for Bay players
A lifelong dream is bearing fruit as the Pro Skills Professional Soccer Coaching Academy U16 soccer team have been invited to a trial with a club in England.
However, to get there, they need to raise funds for their airfare to and from London, where they will spend two weeks expanding their soccer knowledge, academy founder Marc Manuel said.
The academy’s U16 side was noticed after some good performances which saw them make the semifinals of the Dana Cup in Denmark in July.
Manuel said they were approached by a scout after the team impressed during one of their matches in the cup, and he offered full bursaries to at least five players.
“He came to us after the match and also invited the entire U16 squad to come over for a trial,” he said.
“He said there would be a possibility of more bursaries being handed out after the trial.”
Manuel said the boys would spend two weeks in England, undergoing a series of tests to flesh out the best of the best.
Once the selected players have been earmarked, they would return home to finalise all their documentation before making the move to the northern hemisphere.
Furthermore, he said three players from his U12 side, Keandre Adams, Jethro October and Bunono Peter, were spotted and headhunted by a German club – but he said the potentially life-changing decision on whether to let them go needed to be made by the boys’ parents.
Manuel spent almost a decade in England where he obtained his Uefa B coaching licence at the London Football Association in 2005.
He later spent a year in the US, at the Sone Soccer Acade- my, before returning to SA to start working on his dream.
The academy was launched in June with the aim of unearthing the best soccer talent in the metro, and also across the Eastern Cape, in order to continuously produce players of the highest standard.
“Our aim is to develop boys who will be able to represent any professional club because at the end of the day we want to produce the type of players who can fit into any professional set-up, be it Chippa United, Ajax Cape Town or the like, and also all over the world,” Manuel said.
“But we need to start here in the province.”
Manuel said the cut-off age for the academy is 18, and if a player is not snapped up by a club, he will then return to club soccer.
“This does not mean that the player is not good enough, if they are not taken by a pro club.
“It just means they need to work harder, because sometimes coaches are wrong as well,” he said.
“For those lucky enough to graduate from the academy, they will be equipped with the necessary skills to play in any professional club – they will know what to expect.
“Having worked at the highest level, I know what is expected and this is what we will try to teach them through our coaching programmes.”
Manuel also mentioned that none of the recent successes experienced by the academy would be possible without their sponsors, including the municipality, for their assistance in getting the project off the ground.