Kenya: What Our Local Football Can Learn From German

Nairobi Star (Nairobi)

Francis Wadegu

29 April 2011

By winning the inaugural Kenya Premier League under 19 tournament Thika United indeed showed their fellow clubs in Kenya’s top flight league the value of having a youth team if not a youth team policy. The Thika based club are bankrolled by dairy firm Brookside. Brookside also sponsor the secondary school games in the country and the region from where Thika United pick the cream of the crop.

Other clubs in KPL might have been forced to embrace the youth policy but in Europe and other parts of the world like South America seeing a player from the academy having a chance to play first team football sends many fans giddy with glee . “Giving the youth a chance to play is one of the best things German football has done over the last ten years,”says Kay Oliver Langedorf the press officer of the Bundesliga at a seminar held for Kenyan journalists in Frankfurt.

Oliver went on to demontrate the success of having a youth policy by football clubs saying that the financial implications of doing that are outweighed by the long term achievement for the foreseeable future “In the wake of the poor showing at the Euro 2000 championships where Germany suffered two defeats and a draw, their worst showing in any major tournament, it was agreed that all the 32 teams in the Bundesliga 1 and 2 have youth clubs. That success was seen at the Euro 2008 where Germany reached the finals and at the 2010 World Cup where they finished third,” he explained.

While the Germans are benefitting from the vision of their football leaders, their Kenyan counterparts are fighting to gain positions of power not to develop the game. The fact that a properly assembled national Under 23 squad to play Eritrea over the weekend in an All African Games qualifier is a case in point.

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