In a space where years and years of time and effort put into the development of players by amateur clubs hardly yield any results at grassroots level, especially when they make it to the professional ranks, Inqaku have partnered with the South African Football Association (SAFA) to restore parity on the ground for local clubs. Not only do clubs have the ability to, through a digital ecosystem focused on transparency, efficiency, service delivery and uniting the football community, be able to track and ensure players' eligibility through the registration process on the MYSAFA website – but they will also be able to claim training and development compensation fees on players who turn professional. SAFA, as a result, have also managed to curb age-cheating, an ill that has plagued local football for a number of years. Currently ranked number one in Africa and number 15 in the world in terms of FIFA Player IDs issued, Soccer Laduma takes a closer look at the changes made in amateur football by Inqaku and MYSAFA.
What The Siya Crew Has Been Told…
FIFA has, over the last 20 years, developed systems that includes the Kinect ID service, transfer matching system and the FIFA clearinghouse that are all geared to ensure that training rewards, solidarity payments and training compensation are paid to the clubs that develop a player between the ages of 12 and 21 if that player goes on to play professionally. History has shown that those fees are not paid very often – it is approximately 10% of the time globally and far less than that in Africa. Earlier in September, FIFA released the latest transfer figures, which show that Africa and African clubs in particular remain rooted at the bottom by all measures. FIFA reported that in the 2023 mid-year transfer window – June to September –the total spending on men's international transfer fees was up by about 50% from 2022. However, transfer revenue generated by African clubs remains flat and last among confederations where data was available. By comparison, Conmebol transferred a similar number of players "out" (1245 players) compared to CAF (1115 players) but had 10 times the amount of receipts totaling nearly $487.7 million (±R9.2b), which is in stark contrast to Africa's $45.4 million (±R864 million). It's clear that there is immense talent in Africa by how much talent is moving out of the continent. However, there is very little money flowing back to African clubs as compared to the rest of the world. The stats prove that there are (at least) two problems: 1) African clubs are generally not compensated, and 2) our players are undervalued. These are the two problems that Inqaku and MYSAFA aim to address. While South African amateur outfits are yet to receive payments from professional clubs for training and development using the MYSAFA platform, there are hundreds of claims that have been made by clubs, which could result in local clubs earning millions depending on the transfer of players. The Siya crew reached out to Jason Anderson, Inqaku COO, who confirmed that the process of claiming is underway thanks to the MYSAFA platform. "I don't believe any South African clubs have been paid yet via the clearinghouse, but there's been hundreds of claims made for players in South Africa based on the electronic player passports that are captured in MYSAFA, and that happens on an almost daily basis. There are a legal team behind these process and whenever they receive a claim, they write to SAFA and oftentimes write to us at the same time. We then share what information we have in MYSAFA for the player and even though it's not yet flowing through in an automatic way and being paid automatically by the clearinghouse, which is what everybody is working towards … FIFA at the top of the list … the data that's in our in our system is still significant because it is centralized."
What Are The Facts?
Inqaku have taken the local football scene by storm on two fronts: 1) By using software to bring efficiency to amateur football. 2) Providing tailor-made insurance for players, fans, coaches and other football stakeholders. By working together with all football stakeholders – from FIFA down to the smallest grassroots clubs – MYSAFA, which is designed and developed and currently operated by Inqaku, has created a digital ecosystem focused on transparency, efficiency, service delivery and uniting the football community. On this platform, every club and player registered on MYSAFA is issued with a FIFA Connect ID, which is used to record transfers, identify talent and help ensure that developing clubs receive FIFA Training Rewards for the players they develop. To date, over 500 000 player registrations have been captured on MYSAFA and that number continues to grow as more and more clubs realise the importance of what the platform provides. "All regional football, men's and women's regional leagues and provincial and national leagues are on the platform and 75% of the men's Local Football Associations, like senior promotion leagues, are there as well. So, it's had a big impact at club level because in South Africa, clubs have a lot more confidence that they can train and develop a player, and that player is not going to just walk away and sign for another club without the knowledge of the club that's invested in them," said Anderson. "Something like this really only exists in South Africa. There's only one platform in Africa that has registered hundreds of thousands of players a year, has a comprehensive competition management system, etc., and assigns FIFA IDs to all those players and that's our system, MYSAFA, in South Africa. So, operationally and from a regulatory perspective, bringing transparency to football has been a big part of what we've done beyond that. There's so much more that we can do and we are trying to do around making clubs more commercially sustainable, driving more revenue into the sport at the amateur level, giving clubs more opportunities to grow and generate annuity revenue so that they are more stable," he further explains. Another way in which Inqaku are giving back to amateur football is when the company started introducing insurance for players, coaches, administrators and fans who want cover at affordable prices while supporting the development of football back in 2021. Whenever an Inqaku Funeral Insurance policy is purchased using a football club's unique link, Inqaku rewards the club with an amount equal to 10% of the premium every month. Inqaku also pays SAFA a share of the profit made on the distribution of Inqaku Funeral Insurance whenever it is purchased using a referring club link. This is done through an online shop where clubs and SAFA structures can spend rewards generated from promoting Inqaku Funeral Insurance. This encourages collective bargaining for better quality boots, kit and equipment at discounted prices. "We see in South Africa that there are probably 10 000 clubs that are active on an annual basis, but the churn there from year to year of clubs that come and go because they play a couple of seasons in a Local Football Association promotion league or regional league, where you've got fairly significant transport and other costs, you know. They oftentimes will start the season and they won't be able to complete it because they've run out of money and they don't have any money for transport, especially. "So, to be able to drive some revenue back into the sport via insurance sales, we have these funeral policies that we sell that 10% of the premium is paid back to the clubs who referred the policyholder. So, anybody can take a policy and they can specify a particular soccer club as the referring club and then 10% of premium gets deposited into that club's wallet on the MYSAFA platform each month. So, initiatives like that and our player self-registration feature that we've launched and others that are coming are all initiatives to make these clubs more sustainable and more successful," Anderson says.
The Story Behind The scenes
Amateur Clubs To Gain Millions?
Whilst there are no figures available to show it just yet, local clubs could benefit greatly from having the MYSAFA platform as they are now able to make claims to professional clubs for training and development compensation, which could amount to millions in the near future. "So, oftentimes no one was compensated because players' registration history was so murky. With MYSAFA, that's not true anymore. We've been registering players since 2017. You can see when a new player is called up to the U17 national team, for instance, or the U20 – you can go into MYSAFA and see where they've come from. With great regularity, you can see that they've played in the GDL development leagues, starting at U13 and then U15 and U17, which is a successful development league that we've been registering and handling the registrations there since 2018. So many players have five-six years of registration history in there that conforms to the FIFA regulations and can be used for a training compensation claim. But those claims are generally made in the old way, via a lawyer, that essentially goes to the club that signed the player and says 'Here's the evidence' and the invoice and the payments are made without our involvement other than providing the background information for it. And of course, we don't get any compensation from that either. But that was never the plan. So, in that respect, the data in our system is used on an almost daily basis for training compensation. And one day, one day soon, all of that will happenautomatically," Anderson added.
More Than 200 Clubs Have Received Kit Sponsors
In 2021, in a move set to galvanise South African grassroots football, Inqaku set out to sponsor 200 MYSAFA-registered football teams across Mzansi with free kit. More technology is involved in the process In 2019, SAFA launched a WhatsApp chat service to make amateur football more accessible, transparent and free of cheating. This was a first-of-its-kind in global sports, with the service becoming a game-changer for South African football players, administrators, fans and all other stakeholders. "Each player registered on MYSAFA is issued with digital and physical identity cards and a FIFA ID number. In the event that someone believes that an ID card has been forged or faked, the coaches and fans will soon be able to use WhatsApp to check. We phased out our existing card verifier app and offered the same feature on WhatsApp. Not requiring an app download (apart from WhatsApp) meant that card verification is available to thousands more coaches and match officials. It could even lead to phasing out plastic cards altogether one day."
Watch This Space
What is clear is that South African football is losing out on millions of Rands from world governing body FIFA due its outdated regulations relating to the domestic transfers of young players. However, Inqaku and MYSAFA are looking to fix this and while the short-term results are yet to yield, Mzansi football, and the amateur club space in particular, could be recouping millions in years to come thanks to this innovative technology. Most importantly, amateur clubs look set to reap the rewards of their hard work developing players in the dusty streets right across the country, an opportunity that, for all intents and purposes, they do not want to miss.
