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Uganda: Fufa Must Follow Up Talent
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New Vision (Kampala)
OPINION
11 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
James Bakama
Kampala
ANOTHER National Post-Primary Schools Championship is over. Its curtains came down with the selection of yet another squad of the competition's crème de la crème.
Like has been the tradition, these budding teenagers, who have over the past fortnight been carefully selected by coach Mike Mutebi, will play against their Kenyan and Tanzanian counterparts.
This year's squad is even privileged with a dream stint at a renown Brazilian soccer academy thanks to Century Bottling Company. Quite impressive.
What's intriguing, however, is what happens thereafter.
These youngsters who annually dazzle everyone disappear into obscurity.
Another lot is picked the following year and the chain continues.
Interestingly, Mutebi, who is annually on National Council of Sports (NCS) assignment, selects a squad, which I would imagine he recommends to the soccer governing body FUFA.
So, why is there no follow-up of these talents?
Does FUFA doubt Mutebi's credentials as its appointment of Frank "Video" Anyau and Jackson Mayanja on a parallel talent search seems to suggest? Or has the federation simply failed to follow-up.
Whatever the answers are, the sooner FUFA learns that success and continuity are compatible, the better it will be for its plans of ever sending the national team to a major competition.
You've, for instance, certainly not forgotten that golden Portuguese squad of Rui Costa, Luis Figo, Pedro Pauleta, Joao Pinto and Victor Baia, which after winning the U-20 World Youth Championship stayed together as a unit for almost 15 years.
Likewise, the Cranes side that reached the 1978 African Nations Cup final was a product of a youth side that started being groomed a decade earlier.
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Success will only come with long term planning, FUFA must learn.
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