Rwanda Football Federation (FERWAFA) has hired two performance analysts to join Coach Johnny Mckinstry’s backroom staff as the team intensifies preparations for the Africa Nations Championship scheduled to run from January 16 to February 7next year.

The two Englishmen Darren Wiltshire, 32, and Alex McCarthy, 25, arrived in Rwanda on Sunday before traveling to Rubavu, where Amavubi is in residential camp. The two will be part of Johnny McKinstry’s technical staff for the next six weeks.

The two new additions to the technical team will take up the role of performance analysis for the national team, with their duties focused on in-depth analysis of both Amavubi training sessions and match play as well as the technical analysis of opposition teams.

According to FERWAFA officials, up until this point, these were duties undertaken by McKinstry but with the high number of games to be covered in CHAN and significant time required, the Irish-born tactician felt it was crucial to recruit experienced personnel to ensure that every effort was being made to maximize the performance of every Amavubi player.

In a telephone interview with Times Sport from Rubavu on Wednesday, McKinstry praised the arrival of the two analysts saying, "We are very pleased to welcome Alex and Darren to our team for the upcoming tournament, their expertise in performance analysis will spice up everything in camp,”

The head coach revealed that all training sessions are now being recorded and put into video highlights of specific things, "we are looking at, it’s a lot of work, but we now have two experienced people on only that.

Players can review videos and then discuss with coaches, it gives them a better understanding of their performance on a daily basis, and therefore allows them to highlight areas of improvement session by session.”

McCarthy joins Amavubi from English Premier League’s side AFC Bournemough whilst Darren Wiltshire has a ten-year experience working with famous football analysis company Opta.

According to McKinstry, both bring good levels of expertise to the technical team and will produce high quality video analysis to support on-field coaching efforts.

"This is an area of the game that many African teams undermine. Often, coaches purely focus on the practical coaching but go to any top team such as Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Manchester City and you will find performance analysis departments with 10 to 20 people,” he added.

Rwanda is drawn in group A alongside Ivory Coast, Morocco and Gabon in the 3-week competition. The tournament’s opening game will pit McKinstry’s Amavubi against the Elephants of Ivory Coast on January 16 at Amahoro stadium.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw