Mamelodi Sundowns coach Rulani Mokwena has opened up on the efforts the club have gone to help their new signing Abubeker Nassir settle into his new surroundings.
Nassir was signed back in January from Ethiopia Coffee where his performances saw him lauded as a generational talent in East Africa. He also made people stand up and take notice at the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations and more recently when he starred in the 2-0 win over Egypt for the 2024 AFCON qualifiers.
But despite his obvious talent, there’s been a clear language barrier as he speaks Amharic and the club sent him back to his homeland to finish off the season whilst hiring an English tutor in order to help him learn the language.
“It’s a collective effort [to scout] player but with Nassir it’s a little bit of a unique case,” Mokwena said in the post-match press conference after Nassir scored in the 4-0 win over Chiefs.
“He still has a lot of work to do, he’s gonna improve, the way we work and the way we train players are bound to improve. And the same expectation can go into Nassir, but again I plead for patience and for time and not to overhype.
“He’s still relatively young with incredible potential. When we signed him he went back to Ethiopia for six months, we had to get an English tutor to spend a bit of time with him so his level of English can get better.”
Mokwena went on to add that they roped in a translator who attends training and was seen helping at Loftus Versveld with instructions before the Ethiopia international made his way onto the pitch.
“It is at a relatively good standard, although now we’ve had to hire a translator for him. Because we were struggling with some of the instructions and the information that we wanted to bring to him.”
“I want to thank the club for supporting that notion because when we made that plea, immediately the next day we had a translator on the training pitch working with us. And you could see even before we brought him on we had to use the translator to get the message across – but incredible potential surrounded by other incredible players.”
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