BFA players after winning the Kearsney Cup in 2024
Eight British Football Academy (BFA) players are to travel to the UK to try out for the English Championship League-ranked Queens Park Rangers’ (QPR) academy with high hopes that one of them will be selected for the squad.
Three of the young players will return to Queens Park Rangers in July for a second try-out after being assessed last year and found to be “just as good”, technically, as the club’s existing academy squad that has trained with it for six years.
BFA co-founder John Read, a Briton who started the first-of-its-kind South African academy at Pinetown Boys High School in KwaZulu-Natal with compatriot Peter Coyle and Ian Kilbride in January last year, said the players had exceeded expectations in a short period of time.
The academy was started to give talented South African players from poor backgrounds a route to playing in the English Premier League.
It has granted scholarships to 23 boys, mostly from rural areas, to study at the high school while training with the academy.
Read said the boys had excelled on an international stage with stiff competition where at least 200 countries were vying to get their players into the English leagues.
Elihle Mbonambi, Ntuthuko Mdlolo, Khulekani Nxumalo and Bande Gumede visited Queens Park Rangers Academy
“I feel very proud of what we’ve achieved. When we opened the academy we said we were going to run it on a highly professional basis and offer all these very talented lads a good education and high-quality football coaching. We’re doing that,” he told the Mail & Guardian.
“The ultimate objective was to offer them a pathway, if they’re good enough, to play in the professional leagues in England, and that’s what we’re trying to do. We are constantly striving to improve the academy.”
He said British Football Academy coach Siya Mnganga and his assistants had been “outstanding” and improved the confidence and on-field performance of the squad, which led to their positive reception at QPR.
“The Queens Park Rangers coaches were amazed at how good the BFA players were and said three were good enough to play in their professional academy,” Read said.
“They were partly amazed because our lads were much younger than the QPR academy lads who, on average, were 20 years old. The BFA boys were 16 or 17 years old and their body frame was much more slight than the QPR lads.”
The British Football Academy had been advised to focus on “bulking up” the players with nutrition and gym workouts because their slight builds made them vulnerable to injury, and to come back in a year’s time.
Mnganga, with his “rough number of 70 foot soldiers” who scout the length and breadth of KwaZulu-Natal for potential players, has been instrumental in mining the province’s football talent.
“Last year was really, really good. I’m very proud of how the boys adapted to their new life. Sometimes we ask them to be here at 6am to go to the gym, and they are coming from different locations, so it’s difficult for them. The biggest thing is that we’ve got good people,” Mnganga said.
“The reports and feedback we got from Queens Park Rangers was very good, but they did ask us to bulk up one or two of them, so we need to put them in the gym a lot more. We’re also getting them supplements to help them bulk up.
“But they were really impressed with their technical ability and what they offered in terms of their football intelligence,” Read said.
Apart from impressing CPR academy coaches, the British Football Academy’s team emerged victorious in the Kearsney Soccer Tournament, the Durban Central LFA U17 League, the Durban Summer League and the Pinetown U19 Super Cup last year, beating some of the top teams in the province across the tournaments.
Three players have been signed up for local professional teams.
BFA co-founder John Read set up the academy as a pathway to the English Premier League
Bande Gumede, 17, is a right back who started playing for AmaZulu U-19s in January and is about to start training with the first team; Khaya Mzimela, a centre half, has joined Kaizer Chiefs and has played for the South African Under-17 team four times, while Xolela Ngejana has been signed up to play goalkeeper for SuperSport United.
Bande, who matriculated from Westville Boys’ High School last year, is also among the three players who will be returning to the QPR academy in July. He said he has been pushing himself hard physically while playing for AmaZulu and is excited about returning to the UK.
Inanda township boys Ntuthuko Mdlolo, 18, and Khulekani Nxumalo, 17, who have been friends since primary school and were selected for the BFA at the same time, are also returning to the QPR academy.
“I was very happy to go to England last year because I did not expect to get this opportunity. Everyone was happy at home. I just need to work harder this year because now I know what I need to do,” Mdlolo said.
Nxumalo said he was initially nervous when playing at QPR last year but he was not surprised at the positive feedback he got from the coaches and is excited about going back in July. He hopes to play for Brighton & Hove Albion or Manchester City one day.
Pinetown Boys’ High School head Sunil Singh said the British Football Academy had raised the profile of the previously struggling school, which is now attracting a high volume of boys with professional football dreams.
The academy had transformed the lives of learners from rural, disadvantaged backgrounds, helping them to improve their behaviour and their spoken English as many could not speak the language fluently when they arrived at the school.
“The atmosphere of the school has changed, the branding of the school has changed, the morale of the school has changed.
“I can’t tell you if it is totally because of the BFA, but BFA has a big role to play in it, because we tell the boys that if you don’t behave, you’re not going to go into BFA,” Singh said.
“Our school now has 16 soccer teams from grades 8 to 12, which is a massive increase from one team four years ago.”
Coach Siya Mnganga has ‘foot soldiers’ across KwaZulu-Natal scouting for talent.
Applications to the school from high-income suburbs had surged whereas previously it had tended to attract learners from impoverished areas where parents sometimes struggle to pay fees.
Pinetown Boys’ school governing body chairperson Ntokozo Khuzwayo said the academy had enhanced the school’s reputation in the region.
“This is good exposure for our school because, previously, Pinetown Boys’ was in the news for bad things [school politics] but, when we took over in 2021, together with the principal, we had a vision. The vision was, let’s bring Pinetown Boys’ High School back to its glory days,” he said.
“Imagine our boys playing for Liverpool, for Manchester City or for any other football club in the leagues? That will be history-making for us. It will put Pinetown on the map.”
Besides Gumede, Mdlolo and Nxumalo, the other boys who will be travelling to QPR are Malwande Chiliza, Olwethu Khumalo, Awande Xaba, Bandile Nkomo and Khayalethu Mzimela.