By Sports Reporter
The Real Betis Academy Zimbabwe has started to recruit foreign nationals, with Brazilian and Ghanaian teenagers joining the project.
Yesterday, the academy announced the arrival of Bernardo Ribeiro from Brazil and Patrick Oshiah from Ghana, who are both 18 years old.
The players, who were both based in Dubai before coming to Zimbabwe, are expected to develop themselves before they can break into Europe.
Academy chairman Gerald Sibanda said they were pleased to have different nationals at the academy, adding that the move would benefit local players.
“We are grateful that we finally started training four weeks ago after our programmes were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
“We welcome Bernardo and Patrick. If we want to move forward, we cannot do it alone. These two guys bring a different culture of football and our players can benefit from them. We can learn a different culture and language of football. We all know that Brazil has produced the best players to play the game.
“They have a certain way that they play and we want our players to learn from them. Ghana is one of the best teams in Africa. They produce stars and Patrick can help our players as well.”
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The academy has employed former Premier Soccer League players as coaches.
They include Murape Murape, Gift Lunga Junior, Philemon Mutyakureva, Johannes Ngodzo and Tichaona Dhiya.
Yesterday, Murape echoed his boss’ sentiments saying local players would learn a lot from the foreign players.
“I think having foreign nationals is a good development for us, we can only learn from the best,” he said.
“Our time as players, we never got such opportunities and I am happy for our students because they can only get better when there is good competition. What we need is good competition so that our players can test themselves and improve themselves.”
Ribeiro said he was looking forward to continuing his development before he could move to Europe.
He said he played for the Boavista Academy in Brazil, among a host of clubs.
“I am pleased to be here. I want to continue my development. Real Betis is a very big club and hopefully I can go and play in Europe,” he said.
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