The Germany Football Federation [DFB] in conjunction with the Rheinland Pfalz has inspired Rwandan football standards in the past years through provision of technical support. This has been channeled through the long standing cooperation exisisting between Rheinland Pfalz province and the Rwandan people.
The Germany Football Federation [DFB] in conjunction with the Rheinland Pfalz has inspired Rwandan football standards in the past years through provision of technical support.
This has been channeled through the long standing cooperation exisisting between Rheinland Pfalz province and the Rwandan people.
Germany support to Rwandan football in the past ranges ranges from provision of national team coaches to training local coaches. Various experienced Germany tactician have at the helm with the national soccer team since 2000.
At the end of 1999, 75-year Old Rudi Gutendof was sent by DFB in 2000 to work with Amavubi stars. He left after guiding the national team to the CACAFA senior championship held in Kampala at the end of 2001 campaign.
Though Gutendoff did not do much in youth development programs he inspired then uprising young stars like former national team captain Olivier Karekezi through the national team ranks.
Six years later came a soft spoken tactician in Michael Nees whose task was to keep momentum in the national team and at least earn qualification to the 2008 African nation’s cup.
Nees came when the soccer pundits in the country had high hopes in international football especially after having qualified and participated in 2004 African cup of nations held in Tunisia.
Nees did not succeed with the national team task and was consequently sacked after his contract expired.
Two months later, DFB sent out Michael Weiss with a mission to promote youth football, coordinate and improve on DFB activities with in the country. Weiss was the most successful of all DFB German tacticians who worked in Rwanda.
During his four year contract with the sports ministry and DFB, he helped the junior and senior national teams conduct training camps in Germany. Several Rwandan coaches have been trained from Germany through cooperation of Rheinland Pfalz, DFB and Rwanda.
The DFB offers courses to foreign trainers in the towns of Koblenz and Hennef close to Cologne in western Germany where trainers can obtain various certificates in football courses that run over several weeks.
Michael Weiss did reasonably a good job in developing most of today’s young players. His good coordination with DFB offered good technical expertise especially during selection and scouting of young players to join the FERWAFA soccer academy inaugurated two years ago.
The German Football Association (DFB) is now a big player in the business of providing international assistance. In many developing countries, the DFB runs projects aimed at developing fledgling sports associations.
The DFB, in cooperation with the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and the German Foreign Office also runs sports programs in countries such as Azerbaijan, Mozambique and Namibia.
The main focus of their work is fostering talent, educating trainers and coaches and administration.
Finding success in the DFB projects is heavily dependent on good relations and cooperation with the administrators in partner countries though still much is required from them as well.
In addition, the DFB is fully behind the establishment and success of the national women football league. Today Rwanda has one of the outstanding national women football league in East and central Africa with games every weekend.