The Football Kenya Federation (FKF) has begun training football players at a young age to acquire enough skills to attract the attention of Football Clubs in Kenya.
FKF President, Nick Mwendwa, said the trainings are being conducted at the grassroots level, with the Football for Schools (F4S) Programme coming as a boost.
He said for a long time Football Clubs in Kenya have had their own strategies of selecting the best players that will assist them in winning the Kenya Premier League (KPL), going as far as outside the country, to look for players for lack of enough options.
With proper early training, Mwendwa says FKF target to produce many players that those clubs will have many choices they can recruit from, to help them win championships.
He noted that despite producing for the clubs, Kenya is also developing football talent at a young age, so that they can compete with seasoned Football teams, during the African Cup of Nations and even the World Cup.
“Our job is to have many top players we are going to produce, so that our clubs will have a choice from Kenya. We are working at the grassroots because that is where we will get quality players,” he added.
He was speaking during the closure of a three-day training of 50 master trainers, to spearhead the F4S programme in the first selected 2000 schools across the country.
Mwendwa together with the Global FIFA F4S programme Director, Fatima Sidibe, launched the F4S Mobile Application that will assist the master trainers, to train more trainers.
He thanked FIFA for donating 63, 000 footballs, specifically for the programme and meant for the 4–14-year-olds which can be used on any type of field across the country.
“We need to understand that this is a lifetime project, which is meant to introduce young talented persons to football, so that they can have fun, enjoy and then we can pick the best for our other programmes,” he added.
“Sometimes a child may play but may not be able to play at the professional level. We are also helping them where they go, because we have university challenges, we have college challenges, where they go to advance their skills professionally,” he added.
Sidibe said FKF has agreed to integrate the programme into their strategic plan and, together with the Ministry of Education, continue with the programme for a very long time.
By Moses Wekesa
