WITH the Lesotho Football Association (LeFA) presidential elections fast approaching, the Maseru District Football Association (DIFA) President, Lijane Nthunya is set to challenge the association’s long-running boss, King’s Counsel Salemane Phafane for the top seat on September 11.
sports
Sept. 7, 2021
TEBOHO JAFETA
3 min read
Nthunya vies for top LeFA post
Maseru District Football Association President, Lijane Nthunya
Story highlights
His focus is to make football a viable industry
Target is to develop infrastructure in the form of grounds
LeFA Secretary General, Mokhosi Mohapi told Metro that all protocols have been observed and the association is working as per guidance of the state mitigation strategy like it happened during last year’s congress.
The campaign process, he said ends seven days before election day, announcing Nthunya and Phafane as the only candidates so far.
For his part, Nthunya said he is mainly focused on making football a viable industry in Lesotho through putting emphasis on youth development.
The idea, he further showed is to allow children to learn the football culture from an early young age by assigning qualified personnel to train them.
“The other target is to develop infrastructure in the form of grounds, that is, construct good quality grounds with natural grass in every district,” he said.
In order to achieve this goal, he noted that LeFA would have to partner with the government through the ministries of public works, agriculture, sports, education and water.
“The role of the Ministry of Public Works involves ensuring that skilled people are deployed in the construction of the grounds. The Ministry of Agriculture will be in charge of guiding us in planting the natural grass in pitches while the water ministry will show us how to rightly irrigate the grounds. The education ministry should be engaged through including sports in its curriculum so that we will be able scout talent at grassroots level in schools,” Nthunya said.
He further said his focus is to restructure LeFA through making DIFAs independent from the body so that they could run their own district affairs and have their own coaches and referees’ committees that will recruit more personnel at district level.
“I also aim to ensure that LUCSA, LISA and LEPSSA have their own district committees to run their affairs at district level and report to the LeFA.
“My focus will also be to engage some of our football legends to be part of football administration to get proper guidance and learn from their experiences.
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“We need to engage in skills development and train coaches at all the levels, from basic and grassroots level to CAF A Licence so that all our coaches will be qualified. We need to train referees to ensure that all people who administer games are well skilled.
“We need to make football valuable by having transparent administration in order to attract investors through displaying good results.
“The presence of investors makes it easy for clubs to grow, developing the leagues in the process.
“There is need to largely publicise the sport so that a huge number of Basotho get interested in the sport and get involved. We will consequently have marketable players at national level that will attract foreign teams. Some of the world’s great footballing countries like Brazil focus on exporting quality players, hence contributing to the country’s economy,” he said.
Phafane who has been at the helm of the association for the past 16 years was not available for comment.
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