No youth team with tourney only 3 weeks away

By ODINDO AYIEKO

THE KENYA FOOTBALL FEDERATION is shopping around for a model to adopt for its yet to be established youth development programme.

According to newly appointed KFF technical director Patrick Naggi, part of the programme will be to initiate a youth league countrywide and also direct premier league clubs to set up under-20 squads that will form part of the youth competition.

“We realise that we are lagging behind even in East Africa. Uganda and Tanzania have made great strides in soccer development but we have been slow in coming up with youth development strategies,” said Naggi.

KFF is already looking at models from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and West Africa to see how a viable development programme can be set up to identify and nurture young soccer talent in the country. The federation is also looking at youth models in Europe, notably the Netherlands.

“It is because of our tardiness that you now see Tanzania, Uganda and Sudan overtaking us in the Fifa rankings and Eritrea and Ethiopia making great strides,” Naggi said.

He gave the example of Rwanda, which did not have a national team at the end of the 1994 genocide but are now ahead of Kenya.

“They are even going to host the Africa Youth Championships next year,” added Naggi.

As part of the wider plan to develop youth talent, the country has entered the qualifiers for the Africa Under-17 and Under-20 championships, which begin next month.

In the Under-17 tournament, whose finals will be held in Algeria, Kenya will play Rwanda in the qualifiers with the winner playing Sudan in the second round.

THIS MATCH GIVES US AN OPPORtunity to test our capacity against nations that have taken youth development seriously. We will be forced to assemble a ragtag team because we do not have a programme as yet,” said Naggi.

The match is three weeks away, but Kenya is yet to identify players for the game, nor are plans for a training camp in place. Still, Naggi is optimistic Kenya will put up a show in the qualifiers.

“We hope to be ready in time for the matches, but we are also handicapped by the fact that potential players are still in school. We have to wait until the Easter holidays begin to assemble a team,” said Naggi.

In the Under-20, Kenya will face Somalia in the first-round qualifiers of the championships whose finals are to be staged in Kigali.

Naggi says KFF will be forced to use a database left behind by a Qatar-based youth academy — Aspire — which conducted a two-month selection programme to pick three Kenyan players for scholarships to the academy. Over 5,000 boys enrolled for the selection programme, which ended last month in Nairobi.