By Nelson Mpaata,

When you interview most Uganda football fans today, they will look at qualification to either CAF or FIFA tournaments as the most dream to the cranes, yeah! It’s almost every Ugandan dream where by most people look at qualification as one of the success in football but then; there are more strong reasons as to why Uganda hasn’t yet qualified and still have some time to yearn for if some of these steps are not taken.

A strong question will come out as to why with all the materials and examples of professional footballers, the so called professional league when indeed it is amateur, Cecafa as well as regional domination. But then according to a massive research made by THE SUPREME SPORT,there are a lot more reasons why Uganda needs to work hard if it is to qualify for international tournaments which among others include:

Career guidance: Uganda’s lack of professional career guidance is one of the biggest challenges faced by our so called professional footballers yet in actual sense they are semi-professionals, leading to their growth with an amateur attitude towards football and become complacent with it! We’ve seen most of them leaving the pitch with nothing, the likes of Joel Kitamirike, who played for Chelsea in early 2000s a major English club but at the end of his career had nothing to show for it!

I strongly believe a career guidance would have been a great addition to his life after football.It’s unfortunate that a dominant country in the region lacks a professional league meaning players are not prepared .Lack of proper academies which teaches football philosophy specifically and discipline and those that existed have already been sold for instance Jogo young.

As today a child struggles with his/her talent till he succeeds eying for profession even before being ready, leading to
his stay at the club for that one contract he signed and finally coming back just because he wasn’t fully prepared hence academies should be put in place so as to cater for the coming generation.

Uganda’s being number one in the region of East and Central Africa has not proved anything internationally instead just shows its declining capability with the latest being evidenced with two leagues even if in the world i have not seen professional leagues under football federation but in Uganda it has happened and continuing the same way. Therefore Uganda needs to do a lot so as to bring the league together so that players can continue competing favourably.

Long term plans are not considered instead they look at short term plans resulting into age cheating as we always see it in Copa Coca-Cola tournaments, and other under age tournament as age fitting lads are denied chances just because they are on short term strategies of every year winning a trophy but not building a winning tomorrow as witnessed in growing countries in football are doing i.e. Zambia Kenya and Ethiopia.

Truly speaking, proper committees should be put in place to cater and follow the young age tournaments to prevent the age cheats Short sighted technical committee appointed which lacks that sharp eye to identify and tell as well as following lads playing either in the league or other tournaments who instead result into playing games on their computers in their offices.

These are some of the few reasons as to why Uganda has so far failed to perform well internationally besides age cheat and will not perform tomorrow if those few and many others are not put into account.

Disclaimer: The article does not reflect the opinion of the writer and not of Soka25east

Collins Okinyo

Ex- CAF Media Expert. An expert on African football with over 15 years experience ,always with an ear to the ground with indepth knowledge of the game. I have worked for top publications including 7 years at www.supersport.com until i founded www.soka25east.com to quench the thirst of football lovers across the continent. I have trained young upcoming journalists who are now a voice in African football.I have covered World Cup,AFCON,CHAN,Champions League,Confederations Cup,Cecafa,Cosafa,Wafu and many other football tournaments across the World. Founder Football Africa Arena(FAA),Founder www.afrisportdigital.com