Former Warriors captain Peter Ndlovu said the country should build its junior national football teams around the Under-13 team that recently participated in the Volkswagen Junior Masters in Poland.
The team, which failed to progress from the group stages at the tournament held over the weekend, arrived back in the country on Tuesday afternoon.
The team won their first two matches, beating Qatar 2-1 and Ukraine 1-0 before losing to Austria (1-0), Brazil (2-0) and Switzerland (2-0).
Despite failing to get past the group stages, Ndlovu said the players could still hold their heads high.
“The boys gave a good account of themselves and managed to win our first two matches. It was unfortunate that we were in the same group with giants like Brazil and we couldn’t progress to the next stage.
“It was a good experience for the young boys, they learnt a lot from that tournament in terms of their development. What we should do now is to keep the team intact and build our junior teams around those boys.
“There is a lot of talent and we should look forward to see the bulk of them making it into the Under-17 national team in the near future,” said the national Under-23 coach.
Twenty-two countries participated in the tournament which was eventually won by Germany. Only two teams from Africa — Zimbabwe and South Africa — participated at the tournament.
