Pascalinah Kabi
MASERU — Lefa technical director Seephephe Matete has urged the Ministry of Education to introduce sport as part of the education curriculum. In an interview with the Sunday Express on Tuesday, Matete said Lefa must work closely with the government to address the numerous challenges facing sport in Lesotho.He said there were no grassroots programmes to develop sports in school adding that working with the government would help address these concerns. “In order for us to be able to address these challenges, we must first sign a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Education so that we can have sports as part of the education curriculum.
“The understanding agrees to formalise football in schools. Having special programmes like setting aside Tuesday afternoons for Maseru central schools to practise at Pitso Ground must be signed,” Matete said.
He said the lack of grassroots programmes, finances, the mindset of stakeholders and the absence of a national league were hindering the development of women’s football in Lesotho. Matete said world football governing body, Fifa, had already promised to send a specialist on grassroots programmes to help the country develop long-term plans.“Because we are seriously lacking grassroots programmes, Fifa has promised to send its special consultant to come and help us with this plan of involving the government,” he said. He said Lefa is planning to have a strategic meeting with the women football development committee to map the way forward.“We are going to sit down with the women’s committee and draw our strategic plan for the next four years. “But all in all we must involve the stakeholders because they are the ones directly dealing with these children and have power over them.” Matete made the remarks a day after he returned from a Fifa/Caf Women World Cup Conference held in Johannesburg, South Africa. The indaba which ran from Friday to Sunday sought to analyse the Women’s World Cup tournament held in Brazil last winter.It was attended by 50 of the 53 Caf member associations.
“The conference was held for Africa to specifically discuss its potential, challenges and way forward as we prepare for the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada,” Matete said. “Translating what we learnt to our situation in Lesotho, there are many challenges we are facing and we need to start addressing them now,” he said.Dealing with the issues would help Lesotho perform well in the 2015 World Cup qualifiers. Matete said that women footballers in Africa were generally physically strong and had a fighting spirit but these were not enough for competitive football.“These two are not enough in football. We need players to have technical awareness and passion which are lacking in our local football,” Matete said. “For our local footballers to have this, they need to have intelligence to improve their technical awareness. We also need more coaching and lots of games and international exposure.”
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