For the Rwandan football to develop and compete with the best on the continent, there should be academies and a proper youth football structure. There is no two ways about it. It is high time we, as a country and football administrators in particular, reflect on what has not been done and put right what is required. Many youth academies need to be established and supported. Competition at youth level is at the forefront of the world’s most popular sport today, and success in lower age brackets is considered the topmost measure of a team’s progress. It is not the case in domestic football. A handful of clubs have academies, and the football governing body (Ferwafa) has not even done the bare minimum to establish a youth league. “If we had many academies, the situation would be a lot different,” Theonas Ndanguza, the Director of PSG Academy in Rwanda, told Weekend Sport, highlighting that youngsters lack competition and serious challenges at youth level. And, he continued, that jeopardizes the future of topflight clubs and national teams. For decades now, as rightly put by James Munyaneza, the local football leadership has implemented ‘short-termism instead of long-term planning’ and the outcome has almost always been the same – mediocre performance.
