I
pity those match commentators and analysts for not doing their home work
especially in the case of United FC's remarkable story. For them to label Coach
Dan Malesela's impressive team as a replica of Barcelona is surely ignorant and
misleading.
The
roots of United FC football philosophy are in the 1992-95 development work done
at the Sport School of Excellence where, for the first time, we identified the
strengths of SA young talent, mainly ball
skill (including dribbling) possession, creativity, mobility, etc.
The
training and playing philosophy was then designed
according to those qualities. Some people who still have the 1995, SSE U12
videos would agree. All the coaches and players who were learning and
benefiting from that genuine SA football mentality have been making a
significant difference in the way the game is played, since.
There
is a perfect match between Dan
Malesela's coaching mentality and the nature and development of the majority of
his players. Other coaches who previously worked with the players in same
program (that also included the PUK Tawana experiment) - Zipho Dlangalala,
Floyd Mogale and Sudesh Singh – share
identical football mentality with what we see in United FC's football.
Fortunately,
for all these coaches and players their knowledge and experiences on the SA
unique players' profile has not been contaminated
by the level 1, 2, or 3 coaching irrelevancy or imported coaches'
'expertise'.
The
similarity between United FC and Barcelona's football are coincidental as there
is proof that the actual potential of SA talent could exceed the standards and
performance of current Barcelona if
correct principles of development, training methods and competitions are
provided to this rare quality young talent. WARNING: There are efforts made by
those (SAFA?) who would like to 'marry' the nature of SA players with European
aggression, physicality and simplistic tactics.
That shall never be
allowed to happen!
By Dumitru Ted
