We need change at Rwanda Football Federation

Editor, RE: “Does Nzamwita deserve a second term as FERWAFA president?” (The New Times, June 24). There have been serious issues in world football starting with FIFA, then CAF and to some extent FERWAFA. There is a new leadership in FIFA and in CAF which is a good thing in both cases and the same thing should happen in FERWAFA come September (at least in my opinion). Now specifically to our football federation, there is an indicator that I didn’t see in this editorial: our ranking on global football. I believe we are still lagging behind and if I’m not mistaken, we might even have regressed in the last couple of years. As far as leadership is concerned, brother Vincent de Gaulle Nzamwita has done his time to the best of his ability and CHAN was a success but it was mainly because of the might of the Government of Rwanda. Unfortunately his leadership has some gaps despite the fact that he’s a likable fellow and we can’t just ignore: transparency issues in his administration; lack of confidence by the Rwandan professional players (who exchanged nasty words with him in the media) and by the way these guys have earned respect as they are the only Amavubi team that made it to the latest round of CAN back in 2004. I read it as a vote of no confidence by credible stakeholders. I believe we need a serious administrator in FERWAFA with a vision to grow football from the grassroots all the way to professionalize the sport and attract private sector money into the sport. We need leadership like what we currently have in cycling, in my opinion. Football is the most popular sport in Rwanda and the one with more resources available to it but in all honesty how many people buy tickets and get excited to see a regular season game, probably not as many as we should have? Another indicator for us sports fans, go to all drinking joints (sports bar) around the country with nice big flat screens, the matches you see are from Europe (UK, Spain...). These games attract customers and rarely do you see local games featured which is a shame....that basically says our football is not selling. Al

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We need change at Rwanda Football Federation