AfricaPress-Tanzania: FOOTBALL clubs in the country have been encouraged to invest much in youth development programmers believing that is the only guarantee to minimise the import of foreign players.
This was said recently by Mtibwa Sugar Head Coach, Zuberi Katwila, who insisted that the level of investment in youth players his side did is paying off as they are able to generate income from them.
“When you invest a lot in youth football, you are assured of having a competitive squad in the near future and leaving that aside, you can also make profit from them when they are sold to other clubs.
“If you invest well in the youth programmes you make positive steps as far as football development is concerned and this should be highly urged to be done by many clubs in the country,” he said. He therefore advised teams trading in the top flight league not to be afraid of parading young players saying as long as they get playing time, their level of understanding the game improves.
“At Mtibwa Sugar, I usually give chance to the youth to play in the Mainland Premier League games because the level of training they undergo makes them ready to face any club and that is what I have been doing with full blessings from the management,” he added.
He again disclosed that if he can be given a chance to coach any of the big teams in the country, he could be featuring some of the young players as one way to give them a glimpse on how it feels to play at a big club.
“Football market especially in Europe requires young players because they can be easily trained and adapt to the playing chemistry of the concerned team as such, much attention should be directed to promote these players,” Katwila remarked.
On his part, Young Africans youth team coach Said Maulid said the approach of developing youth football among the big clubs in the country is not healthy.
“We face many challenges when discharging our duties because much focus is directed to the senior team and ignore the junior team in as such; we fail to achieve our targets.
“Even if these young players cannot get a chance to be promoted into the senior team, still they can get an opportunity to play elsewhere and in that case, a club which raised him can benefit from that player but that is yet to be given attention now,” he said.
He added: “At some point, we even requested sports stakeholders to help our team with playing gears like jerseys a thing which should not be entertained at a youth team which belongs to a big club like Yanga.”
