Put Tucak on the next flight to Croatia

AFTER failing to guide Rwanda to next year’s Africa Nations’ Cup finals, there should be any more negotiations and ridiculous excuses, Branko Tucak should be booked on the next flight to his native Croatia. Whoever was responsible for bringing and paying Tucak was advised before things got worse, at a time when we could have revived our chances of going to Angola but all warnings fell on deaf ears. Pay the Croat whatever is remaining on his contract and let him go, and then go back to the drawing board. The continued buoyancy from the ministry of sports and culture (who are the Croat’s paymasters) that the country will qualify for Angola 2010 CAN finals is what has cost us, thus leaving the whole nation in despair. This qualifying campaign has cost the Government of Rwanda millions of tax payers’ money and precious time in preparing a non-productive batch of players and their coaches. Very few would have been sad if this campaign involved a greater percentage of Rwandan talents as this would be an investment of some sort, but to fail this bad after spending millions of tax payers’ money on acquiring services of foreigners, who are not even any better than the real Rwandan players, makes it hard to take. Now that we have missed out on participating at next year’s Nation’s Cup finals because of Tucak’s inability to get the best out his players, it’s time the current team is dismantled and emphasize turned to grooming local young talents. This is what President Paul Kagame and several others like him have called for, for a long time but ignored by those responsible for the team, who think they can assemble an effective national team within the shortest possible time by buying mercenaries. Investing in young talents should be a long term project and don’t expect immediately results. It takes time but pays off well at the end of the day. It’s just a matter of being patient just like Zambia did when their entire team perished in an airplane crash in 1993. They went on to build a strong team and because of their patience, they have plenty of talents at home and they have now reaping from what they sowed. Unless an effective youth system is embarked on, Rwanda will continue to incorporate different nationalities who have failed to make it in their own countries. There is no serious effort aimed at developing youth football in this country and that’s why we don’t have U-12, U-14 or U-16 playing in international championships. If you don’t have these competitions at the early age, how do you expect to build a good youth team, say for the U-17, U-20 tournaments or the senior team? Where do you hope to find right players? Due to the continued lack of youth system, we’ve ended up buying mercenaries from different parts of the world to feature for the national team Amavubi team. Just take a look at countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt or even Zambia with better youth systems. Their youth teams have regularly done in international competitions and until we take the same route, we will always lag behind. Other countries have excellent youth competition, with people in charge are aware of the importance of youth football and youth competition unlike us here where the power that be just assume managerial posts to in order to earn hefty salaries, allowances and foreign trips instead of focusing on the interest of the country. There is a time when FIFA put a lot of pressure to all countries not only African to search for the new talents with real age, players who don’t compete every weekend but all African nations with Rwanda inclusive simply ignored it. Whether we like or not, we need a change and it’s only through youth development that Rwandans will be able to have a smile back on their faces once again after this disastrous campaign. Contact:bonnex10@yahoo.co.uk