BRITON LEE JOHNSON has been appointed as the new Technical Director of Rwanda Football Federation (Ferwafa). 

According to Ferwafa, Johnson has been offered a two-year contract after emerging the best from a handful of shortlisted applicants. 

Speaking in a news briefing yesterday at the Ferwafa headquarters in Remera, Johnson said his main objective is youth development, training coaches and grassroots soccer development generally. 

"I would like to bring the experience I have gained from England where I worked for Crystal Palace and Chelsea and implement some of the structures and procedures in order to develop Rwandan football,” Johnson said. 

He revealed that his long term goal is to build an infrastructure that supports sports development especially for the youth. 

"It is also important that we educate our coaches correctly, give them the knowledge that they need such that they can pass it to the children at the clubs, schools and training centres and hopefully we will start picking better players and have a big pool of players to choose from to represent our national teams,” added Johnson. 

Johnson has a big task at hand next week as the national U-17 team takes on Uganda in the second leg of the 2015 Africa Nations Cup qualifier scheduled for August 2 in Kigali. 

Aloys Kanamugire will continue to be his assistant coach both on the national team and in all the activities of the Technical Directorate. The team resumes camp on Thursday. 

Johnson started playing at an early age and signed for Millwall FC as a schoolboy and was released at the age of 16. Johnson then joined Ebbsfleet Utd and played for a number of semi-professional teams before retiring at the age of 23 due to an injury. 

He has over 14 years of professional coaching and sports lecturing experience. His coaching qualifications include the UEFA ‘A’ and UEFA ‘B; Coaching Licence, the FA Youth Coaching Modules and FA Learning Tutors Award. 

Johnson has coached Crystal Palace FC and Chelsea FC respectively and worked for The Football Association as an FA Learning Tutor. 

He replaces French Richard Tardy whose reign in Rwanda ended in June this year.