Football player to networker
A MIXED bag of “discrimination”, grit, a bit of good fortune and pure determination has seen a former Durban footballer transformed into a flourishing world sports administrator. All this while grappling with life in a foreign country.
When Philip Mngadi, 21, a former Glenwood High School pupil, left South Africa in 2013 for Ireland, kick-starting his sports career was all he had in mind. Not willing to risk all on playing football, he has gone on to ”bigger things”, starting an online sports recruiting platform, Talenthub.
After being frustrated by the “unfair treatment and discrimination” here, he sought trials in Ireland. Mngadi said talented local players were overlooked by coaches who favoured the players they had known and worked with for a long time. He said this was rife in South Africa.
Mngadi joined top-flight side Bray Wanderers. But because football is semi-professional in the country, his family in Durban encouraged him to study on a scholarship while chasing his dream. He is now studying law at University College Cork. There he met “brilliant” computer sciences Master’s students who bought into his idea.
“Talenthub is a sports networking service. It facilitates connections between sports talent and managers of sports,” said Mngadi, and outlined his two customer personas.
“A student athlete is someone who uses Talenthub so they can access information about university coaches because maybe they want scholarship opportunities. An aspiring professional is someone who doesn’t want to study, they want a professional trial opportunity.”
Subscribers upload their profiles – including videos, pictures and CVs – for recruiters registered on the application.
Moving to Ireland, he says the plan was to “slowly make his way to bigger and better leagues in Europe”.
Talenthub, Mngadi said, came about when other “overlooked” former high school mates started contacting him, asking how he had made it.
“I realised that this process was time-consuming … I started thinking of an online platform that anyone could use.”
The web application focuses on basketball, baseball, soccer, rugby, hockey, tennis and athletics.
The network has 25 000 university coaches in the US and more than 3 000 agents around the world. The website was launched in July and has 5 000 users.