Six juvenile football teams from Ghana will compete in the novel DS Football tournament scheduled for 26^th November to 5^th December 2020 at Cape Coast Sports Stadium.

The teams, selected from underprivileged communities in Ghana are Glow-Lamp Soccer Academy from Abreshia-Elmina enclave, Green Plus Soccer Academy from Kasao, and Chance for Children (CFC) from La- Accra.

Young Redbull Football Club and Cape Coast Strikers Football Club are from Cape Coast in the Central region and DC United is from Sunyani in the Bono Region.

The U-19 tournament, which is inspired by the recent rapid changes in conditions including covid-19 pandemic will provide an opportunity for the young footballers to showcase to their skills and talent to a community of scouts, intermediaries, coaches and clubs on DS Football - an online platform that provides player management services, mentorship schemes, and connects footballers to agents and clubs across the world. Co-founder and COO of DS Football, Kojo Darko Sakyi-Gyinae is hopeful this innovation will help discover many young football talents in Africa.

"We are excited to have leveraged technology to create opportunities for a lot more young talents in Africa to be seen by stakeholders in the global football industry. This is what many footballers in our country and Africa at large have always wanted. It’s humbling to help these young ones through our platform which easily connect them to intermediaries, scouts, coaches and clubs around the world for potential transfers deals," he said.

Ex –Ghana International, Bernard Yao Kumordzi who works as an intermediary with DS Football will lead a team ex-footballers in a mentorship session aimed at preparing and grooming the young players for a professional career in football.

The DS Football online platform allows players to create profile accounts, upload their match highlight videos, full recorded games, and technical and evaluation reports for agents, coaches and clubs to digitally scout for potential transfer deals.

HOW GHANAIAN STARTUP DS FOOTBALL IS USING TECHNOLOGY TO TRANSFORM FOOTBALL TALENT SCOUTING IN AFRICA

Several football tournaments meant to be scouting platforms have been held in Ghana and in different parts of Africa for many decades. Many of these competitions have highlighted the talents and potentials Ghana and African football possess and have resulted in the direct and indirect showcasing of players who have moved on to play in the big leagues of club football in Europe and other parts of the world.

However, rapid changes in conditions including the covid-19 pandemic that has limited physical activities including football is spurring innovation driven by technology and digitization.

This has inspired DS Football to put together a purely digitally engineered football tournament where expertly selected teams (6) made up of the most exciting football talents considered to be the next golden generation of footballers to dominate world football will have the platform to showcase their talents.

 Production from the 2020 DS Football Tournament will be exclusively made available on the DS Football online scouting platform, a meeting point of renowned global football clubs, scouts, intermediaries, coaches and other stakeholders of the world’s most-followed sport.

The platform also offer data and statistics on team and individual player performance. The uniqueness of the DS Football Tournament is absolute as it cuts across the organization of a 6-Team Finals at one venue over a 9-day period with expert organizations skills, kitting, branding, accommodation, feeding, transportation and production.