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Mzingaye Sibanda Sports Reporter
THE newly-appointed Highlanders juniors’ technical team is focused on turning the Bulawayo giants’ feeder teams into a vibrant system.
Juniors’ technical overseer Dumaza Dube told Chronicle Sport that their mission is to supply the first team with home grown talent.
“We have seen that most clubs especially in Europe, only buy exceptional players and the rest are their own products.
“We are trying to achieve that at Highlanders. We must be in a position to only buy super best players and the rest would be our own products,” said Dube.

Highlanders 2013 squad had about 80 percent acquired players and about 20 percent promoted from the juniors.
However, the few Bosso products failed to get game time. Dube believes the first team’s success depends on a vibrant junior policy.

“We want to go back to a scenario where we can have about 80 percent of the first team players coming from our juniors,” he said.
Highlanders have four junior age groups Under-14, Under-16, Under-18 and the developmental side, Under-19.

Former player Melusi Mabaleka Sibanda is the head coach of Under-19 while Dube, Gift Lunga Jnr and Danny Ngwenya all kept their posts as the Under-18, the Under-16 and Under-14 coaches respectively

Dube said they will work together as a team to see that junior development becomes a success.
“I have belief in the technical team that was appointed, we will work together as coaches because the idea is to help one another so that this project becomes a success,” he said.

Highlanders’ technical team is calling for patience from fans and executive as they believe dealing with juniors is not a day’s job.
“Development is not done overnight, but if it is done right you reap the rewards. It’s just that most clubs now want to fast track development,” Dube said.

He said the challenge that is faced by most developmental sides is the fact that children are now exposed to many choices on how to spend their quality time.

“In our days we were only exposed to football, therefore development was easy and fast. Now kids are exposed to other sporting disciplines and they have lost the love for soccer, few kids still play umphepha (plastic balls),” Dube said.