Leicester Mercury

Teenager gets a taste of first team football

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BRENDAN Rodgers wanted to give a flavour of first team football to Tawanda Maswanhise as the teenager bids to progress through the ranks at Leicester City.

The City boss included the 18-year-old in his matchday squad at Manchester United to give him an idea of what’s required to be a Premier League player.

Maswanhise has impressed Rodgers with his performanc­es for City’s Under-18s, for whom he has been the top assist maker this season, primarily playing on the wing.

For the past two weeks he has been training with the first team.

While his footballin­g experience is limited so far, he has pedigree as the son of a former sprinter Jeffrey Maswanhise who represente­d Zimbabwe in the 400m at the 1998 and 2002 Commonweal­th Games.

“He’s a young player I like,” Rodgers said of Maswanhise.

“I’ve seen him playing for the Under-18s. He’s quick, he’s direct. He’s got a lot of strengths and he’s got a lot of potential, but a lot of work to do.

“Bringing in young players, like we’ve done with Luke before, it gives them the experience.

“To feel the preparatio­n, to sit on the bench, to see the quality of the players, it gives him a flavour of the level and preparatio­n he needs to be here. That was the idea.”

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