South Africa could have a Zidane lining up for Bafana Bafana in the near future.
This after 16-year-old defender Zidane Fouapon sealed a move to La Liga outfit Levante this week.
The promising teenager joins the Valencia-based club from Football Academy Plus.
Football Academy Plus have a partnership with Black Leopards with regard to running their youth programme.
And it seems to be paying dividends with Zidane’s passage to the European big leagues.
What is even more special about the teen is that he is of French and Cameroonian descent.
And should he go on and don the Gold and Green of Bafana, he will become the first player with foreign African roots to play for the South African national soccer team.
We’ve had tons of players with European ties in the setup before.
We can go back to Hans Vonk and Pierre Issa, who were super exotic when they joined Philippe Troussier’s squad for the France 1998 squad.
But Africans remain even more exotic.
We’ve had quite an influx of Congolese and Nigerians over the years and if their children were to become eligible to play for South Africa, I wonder what they would contribute to the national team.
When coming up against those nations in continental competition, we’ve often struggled against their physicality.
West African teams, in particular, have often shrugged off our smaller players and amazingly, we have only beaten Nigeria once in competitive football once since returning to international football in 1994.
That was in an Afcon 2019 qualifier last year and we better hope that we start doing better in that rivalry.
But who knows? Maybe we will never see that after all.
Nigeria’s 2018 World Cup captain Jon Mikel Obi was a trainee right here in Cape Town with Ajax before he left for Europe, so there is a precedent to prove a point.
What it should also highlight is the work of our growing academies.
Outside of the clubs and the Safa’s money-grabbing administrators, people with passion are teaching talented kids to play, relying on updated techniques.
And what is even more important is that one-on-one coaching that really lays the proper foundation for the good players.
More and more players are finding their way to Europe this way and it is becoming a legitimate way to carve a path to professionalism.
Ubuntu Cape Town started out as a Fish Hoek-based academy and after buying an NFD franchise, they are now competing for a place in the PSL.
For one thing, it shows that there is hope for South African football and that not every player is going to fall through the cracks or lose their way.
All we have to do is grow the network and add the expertise to unearth, identify and develop the talent in our communities, wherever they have their roots.