FA TURNS TO PLS U-17S

MBABANE – In what should be sweet melody to the ear, the national team Sihlangu’s AFCON Cup 2017 failure has inspired the National Football Association of Swaziland (NFAS) to turn into development.

It was a close call as Sihlangu needed to win in Malawi but failed to stand a chance of qualifying as best runner-up.
Following the failure and pressure to keep improving next year to realise that dream one day, the NFAS is taking up the PLS Under-17 League which is sponsored by Esibayeni Lodge to ensure the best players are produced for the senior squad.

“We’ve seen that to make the AFCON, we must beat the top ranked countries, win our home games and fight for draws away if winning is hard as well as the fact that development is key for continuity as players grow up. Having realised this, we’ll taking the PLS Under-17 League and make it a big project to produce future stars with all the basics,” NFAS CEO Frederick Mngomezulu said in a press conference yesterday.

successful

He said the most successful countries had their development programmes well in place and these also include having all the junior teams active and playing internationally as well as Futsal which is a skills’ development five-aside game that builds the player in many aspects of the game like pace, concentration and anticipation, among other things.

“We have two leagues already running under the PLS Development and as the NFAS, we felt the Under-17 League is the one we must focus more in as the players here are aged between 12 and 16. We want to prepare players to break into the elite stage at 18 years like we’ve seen the likes of Rooney in England play at this age,” he explained.

Mngomezulu was responding to a question about the national team’s future after coming so close to qualification given the current squad had ageing players who may not be able to achieve any better than this.

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