NFA caused national embarrassment – Andima

Former footballer Julius Andima says the Namibia Football Association (NFA) has caused “national embarrassment”.

This comes amid the home teams’ poor preparation at the recent CAF Africa Schools Championship\Cosafa Qualifier.

Namibia hosted the third edition of the competition at Walvis Bay, where the national under-15 boys’ and girls’ teams struggled to keep pace with their rivals.

The poor showings are a sign of poor preparation, something that did not sit well with football lovers.

Speaking to Desert Radio recently, Andima asked why the NFA did not call off the tournament if the home teams were ill prepared.

“It was a national embarrassment and these kids were thrown in the deep sea. I’m sure with what happened they [the children] do not want to receive any future call-ups,” he said.

“Even the coach said he only had three days to prepare the team and acknowledged that the time accorded for preparation was not enough,” Andima said.

“The authorities must explain what happened. The coach said he is disappointed by the team’s performance and that it is unfortunately attributed to poor preparation.

“That alone annoyed me very much. I asked myself how can we have such a poor performance if we are the host nation.”

He called for accountability given that the NFA knew it would be hosting the 2024 edition since last year.

The Namibian has been reliably informed that the Ministry of Sport, Youth and National Service, including the Namibia Schools Sport Union, were overlooked by the football association.

NFA spokesperson Isack Hamata acknowledged that preparations should have been better to give the home nation’s youngsters a fighting chance.

“The NFA president is on record stating that preparations for such tournaments need to start very early,” he told Desert Radio.

“I stand by what he said. This is an annual tournament, we should prepare properly for next year’s tournament, wherever it will be hosted.

“We need to emulate what countries like South Africa are doing. They have provincial under-15 leagues from which they select their national teams.”