Founder of Global Soccer Schools International Nicki Arest has expressed excitement over the partnership with African giants Mamelodi Sundowns.
A week ago, Sundowns announced a partnership of Mamelodi Sundowns Soccer Schools through a partnership with Global Soccer Schools International, one South Africa’s most successful grassroots football development organisations.
The Mamelodi Sundowns Soccer Schools will be home to 6000 kids across the country catering for players aged four to 15.
During the launch in Cape Town this past weekend, Arest explained the partnership and also touched on how they going to work together as they share the same ambition.
“So, it means everything. So, before we were Brazilian soccer schools when we initially launched, we were a Brazilian coaching philosophy and methodology,” he said.
“So right back in 2010 when I launched, I wanted a partnership with our Brazilians, Mamelodi Sundowns, but we had to wait a while.
“But these last two weeks, that’s been made possible by the chairman. What does it mean? It means that kids around the entire country will now be able to access high-level coaching and change South African football for the better, to make it more skilful, more exciting, by the way we coach the kids and the way we coach the coaches.
“So, we’ve got between 6000/7000 kids doing multiple sessions weekly. We have close to 150 and 200 coaches, and we have 41 fully fledged branches soccer schools around the country.
So, we’re in Gauteng, we know Mpumalanga, we’re in Limpopo, we’re in KZN, and we’re in the Western Cape, but we’re looking to fall into the provinces and other areas that we don’t have representation in at the moment.
“We’ve just put the partnership together, so we’re going to sit down now as a team and have a business strategy and really think hard about how, because we both share the same ambition. We want to change the game of football in South Africa. We want kids to start as young as possible. We want to make it as accessible to as many as we can.
“So, we’ll be sitting down and having really serious discussions around that, but the assistance that I’ve just got in the last two weeks since we announced the partnership has been unbelievable, and I’m very grateful for that.”
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