LaLiga has expanded its footprint into South Africa with the launch of the Mzansi Equality League, a six-week girls’ five-a-side tournament set to take place annually in Cape Town.
The project is an extension of La Ligue D’Egalité – a collaboration between Fundación LaLiga and Petrichor that started in Cameroon in 2022 and subsequently expanded into Kenya – which partners with development organisations to create tournaments in underserved communities.
Around 100 girls across five clubs are participating in the Mzansi Equality League at U13 and U16 levels. The tournament is thus significantly smaller than its counterparts in Cameroon (featuring around 600 girls) and Kenya (around 400). In Cameroon, the tournament runs for four months – around three times as long as the South African version.
Petrichor president Paul Dreisbach told ESPN: “For this one, we’re starting small. It’s a pilot project, so we’re working with five local clubs in the Cape Town area. All of them are sports development organisations.
“They use sport as a way to reach underserved or low-income communities – using sport as a tool to teach leadership, safety, education – lots of different skills along with football.”
LaLiga Africa managing director Trésor Penku confirmed that the Mzansi Equality League was not founded with the intention of preparing girls to become elite players, but rather to promote football as a community-building tool.
However, LaLiga has separately worked to find top talents in South Africa to bolster its academy, Penku said: “We have been very active in South Africa. We had camps also in the past. We have programs where we took two young girls to Spain – they stayed for one year on a scholarship at the LaLiga Academy. That was [based on their] performance.”
Penku added that young players have gone to the academy from other African countries, too, such as Nigeria and Tanzania. LaLiga has opened several academies around the world since the first one opened in Dubai in 2017.
Penku continued” “We always say, and it’s important for us to get this message through: We’re not calling it a performance league… We have had success stories where we have had young girls who have gone on and graced their national teams, but the idea is not to get to the purely performance talent. The idea is to engage young girls.”
One of the five clubs invited to the inaugural Mzansi Equality League was from Oasis Reach for Your Dreams, a non-profit organisation (NPO) which previously sent a men’s team to the Homeless World Cup and finished fifth out of 74 countries.
Girls head coach Mishalan Davids had herself grown up in the care of Oasis. Being based in parts of Cape Town historically affected by apartheid, opportunities for her team to venture to the more affluent suburbs are rare.
Davids told ESPN: “Oasis is my home away from home. I was about 10 or 11 years old. I was actually involved in school programs with Oasis.
“Oasis used to come to the school and have these life skills programs… One of the coaches saw me playing around with a ball and that’s where it started. I wasn’t [only] part of the program anymore. I was part of the football club.”
At the time, she used to play with the boys’ team, and now she heads up the girls’ team that the organisation had initially struggled to set up. Now she has the opportunity to mentor others like herself.
Girls’ grassroots football in Africa has a shortage of tournaments at youth level, but South Africa fares better than some of its counterparts.
In November 2023, the South African Football Association (SAFA) launched U15 girls’ leagues across four of the country’s nine provinces, initially announcing it was catering to 400 players and 38 women’s coaches.
Last year, star Banyana Banyana forward Thembi Kgatlana – who has played in Spain for Eibar and Atlético Madrid and is now with Tigres UANL in Mexico – had warned in an interview with ESPN that Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) champions South Africa would fall behind Morocco if they did not establish girls’ grassroots football.
“There are two things that stand out or are challenging. Number one: Morocco went to the final. They were not in the WAFCON for a very long time and when they come, they go straight to the final,” Kgatlana said.
“The second one is, the first time they got into a Champions League, then they went out. The following year, they went on to win it. It shows that everything that has been laid for them at club level, and international level is giving them the rewards that they need.
“I’m telling you, if no country has taken that into consideration and [is] acting upon getting those structures in, Morocco is going to be a powerhouse whether we like it or not, because they are in the right direction of making sure they empower the women’s game in their country.”
The Mzansi Equality League – still in its fledgling stages – will not solve that problem overnight, but signals a gradual shift towards recognising girls’ football for the growing force it is in Africa.