By:Coach Enock Mukoma
Football Kenya Federation has concentrated their efforts on the leaves (Harambee Stars) and forgotten to water the roots and nurture the shooting stems by setting up youth structures. With this trend, Kenya soccer Federation will never leave to eat the fruits of that tree.
How many Kenyan coaches are professionally trained to handle youth teams? How many coaches actually have received training in the first place, the bulk of our talent is manufactured at the secondary level.
It is without a doubt Kenya is full of soccer talent: Narrowing down to western Kenya and Nyanza region for example, the regions that are known to produce majority of Kenyan players yet the many coaches in this regions are high school teachers who in most cases have no training in youth development.
Some of these teachers have just been appointed by a clueless headmaster who thinks the guy looks strong enough to handle soccer or rather fooled by their knowledge of television football.
Soccer is a skill as well as a science that needs to be groomed and nurtured at a tender age most preferably primary school or secondary school level if too late.
This is the level where players craft their soccer technique as in simple things like instep/sole passing, step over’s, pass and follow the ball , throwing, opening, volley , rules of the game and the list is endless.
At the moment, majority of Kenyan coaches at the premier league levels spend quite a considerable amount of time teaching basic elementary techniques to players something that would have been done at the formative stage of training under 6 –Under 13.
Soccer cozy nations like Italy, Germany, Spain have over 20,000 qualified coaches most of whom are specifically tasked with community youth development programs..
some of the top rated coaches in Kenya are only known to throw heavy insults at players rather than formulate winning tactics both in training , touchlines and in the dressing rooms .
In Kenya you find two coaches in one club one with Dutch vision and another with Brazilian system. The two are totally different and may never find a common understanding thus confusing players in the end.
Football Kenya Federation should identify a working partnership with a leading nation preferable Germany or Brazil. This will then help in setting up a uniform system from youth level all the way to the top level.
If Kenya will ever witness consistency at international level then the be inverted bottom up approach.
