Women's Cosafa tournaments needed – Gertze

Women's Cosafa tournaments needed – Gertze The lack of women tournaments is worrying the head of the women's department at the NFA Jacky Gertze who wants to see Cosafa tournaments for women like those hosted for male players.

Gertze welcomed the newly elected Cosafa leadership's plan of paying more attention to women's football but also expressed concern that there are not similar competitions for women.

“As a leader in women's football I am actually worried about the fact there isn't enough women football competitions in the Cosafa region,” she said, adding that similar tournaments like the Castle Senior Challenge is needed for women's football.

“At least every year we need competitions for our women's teams before we engage in qualifiers for CAF, FIFA or Olympics,” she said.

She stressed that there is a need to have a Cosafa U-17, U-20 and senior team tournaments for women football as well.

“It will be good if we have such tournaments and I for a fact know that countries such as Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho even Angola and Malawi will be inspired to plan and participate in these competitions.

“And women's teams qualifying for continental and world events will have enough games played outside and inside the official qualifiers,” she said.

Gertze maintained that money is the biggest issue at all federations to be able to prepare, “but 80% of the financial constrains we don't have control over, but what we have as federations and Cosafa has, is 100% control over the determination to put our women's competition equally as important as our men's competitions.”

“The region has great female players that can actually play on the world stage, provided the region provides equal opportunities for competitions,” she said.

The women's desk congratulated NFA president Frans Mbidi for being elected as Cosafa's vice-president, and has informed him what the women's desk expects from Cosafa.

Meanwhile, she also congratulated the U-20 girls who recently won a silver medal at the 2016 African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region Five Under-20 Youth Games in Luanda, Angola.

“I am really thankful that the ministry of sport has decided that despite the financial crisis in Namibian sports they managed to send a women's football team to these games.

“I am also happy that the team fought so hard to reach the finals, so I believe our girls' centre has also done a great job in keeping the elite young girls together in training although those outside the centre could only join three days before departure,” she said.

Gertze attributed the girl's hard work to the assistance by FIFA, GIZ, Unicef and Spar group towards the development of women football in the country.



KAINO NGHITONGO