Harambee Stars lost to Tanzania 1-0 in the final of the Council for East and Central Africa Football Associations (Cecafa) Under-20 at Fufa Technical Centre in Njeru, Uganda, on Saturday.
That came in the wake of youthful Harambee Starlets’ goalless draw with Ghana in the first leg of their 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games qualifying duel in Accra on Friday.
After the return leg on Tuesday at Kasarani, Starlets will still have two more rounds before they can qualify.
The results brought to the fore the question of the preparedness of our young teams for the big stage and what investment the country has made in these sports to churn good results.
The junior rugby team, Chipu, in April beat Namibia 21-18 to win the Africa U-20 title (Barthes Trophy) in Nairobi and qualify for the World Rugby U-20 Trophy, second-tier world championship held in July in Brazil.
And it was inspiring to see Kenya competing in the Youth Olympic Games men’s hockey in Argentina last year. Also, Athletics Kenya came up with a noble idea of camps for youth ahead of the 2017 World U-18 competition in Nairobi.
However, it goes without saying that most local sports federations don’t have proper structures for youth development and only thrive with what clubs struggle to produce.
There is no proper transition from primary school, then secondary and on to college level for many sports with no proper academies.
In fact, there is a big void left after secondary school, where a lot of talent goes to waste since only a few private colleges offer sports scholarships.
Again, most of the funds allocated for sports in major public universities don’t go to the intended purpose and this has seen most university teams struggle to get funding.
It’s high time sports federations came up with proper talent identification centres spread across the country.
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