Home grown talent should be priority

In 2006 I had the privilege of being one of the first few journalists to conduct a lengthy interview with the then newly elected president of the Rwanda Football Federation, Brig. Gen Jean Bosco Kazura. He gave me an impression that change was in the air. During the interview he castigated Rwandan football clubs for leaving the burden of developing the beautiful game to the football federation.In this Kazura had a point, Rwandan clubs have failed to live with the country’s development pace and this has not been helped by the kind of management, club managers are exercising. Rwandan sport has not fared very well in management and this mess solely rests with sports administrators at national and grassroots’ levels.We are more interested in short term results not looking to the future and they have failed to explore the golden talents that lay to waste in the country. This has also affected the National team’s set up thus lukewarm performances.The winds of change have blown throughout Rwanda but sports still lags behind. Following repeated failures by the senior teams at major championships and the inevitable calls for action that follow, the sports administrators should forge a Young Player Development Progamme, with recommendations for stability and sustainability. The recommendations should have implications for sports from top to bottom, but central to the proposals should be changes to youth development at grassroots level.Who is to blame for the mess? This should be blamed on the Federation and club administrators who have consistently failed to set up the right youth structures. It’s amazing that in Rwanda, you find coaches concentrating on teaching basic skills instead of dealing with tactical growth and systems of play.It’s one other reason why most of our players can’t play well in any other system apart from the traditional 4-4-2 for football. Clubs must be forced to incorporate youth ranks in their programmes.Rwanda is full of naturally talented players but deprived of skill and technique. For example, in football South America has great natural talent and enjoys excellent technical development and growth the same goes for Cuba in amateur boxing. Just imagine if Rwanda could incorporate both. Qualifications How many Coaches in our sports leagues have the right qualifications? How many youth coaches do we have in our primary and secondary schools plus the so called academies?This is the root cause of our qualification heart breaks and until it’s sorted, Rwanda will never get to where we all want it to be. We can’t qualify by accident at the expense of our competitors who have invested in youth structures and reaping what they sowed. Take an example of Zambia, Ghana, Egypt, Cameroun, Nigeria and Ivory Coast.Like it or not, majority of our players are not good enough technically like those elite countries in Africa. There is no denying the fact that we have lots of talent but are immature in tactic and technique regardless of how much time they have spent playing. We are reaping what we sowed.

Sports

Home grown talent should be priority