By Patricia Angel T
Uganda is one of the countries with best talented football players on the African continent, surprisingly, when her talented players leave for professional careers, at times they end up failing to live up to their expectations and perhaps find themselves coming back on the ground.
Abdullah Mubiru the Uganda cranes coach and police FC head coaches put all the blame to coaches.
“During our trainings sessions, we bring fitness first yet according to the football actions it’s at fourth floor therefore communication, decision making execution are left behind that’s why in matches coaches here in Uganda make a lot of noise communicating with players because they don’t have verbal and nonverbal communication skills and when they go for professional football, you find when they are fit but cannot communicate and perhaps has no knowledge on the signs of communication their fellows use” he added
However, Mubiru believes that players are so much used to this local lifestyle of jazzing, chatting freely and making noise with friends which is not the case in professional football in some countries.
“Life here in Uganda is so easy than the I mind my own business life style in such countries where they go for professional football they therefore take long to adopt to the new environment which also affect our players.” he added.
Despite the blame to coaches, Uganda cranes assistant coach insists that our players are not confident enough to express their views.
“Our players are not confident enough to express themselves they only know that when they politely speak to coaches it means that they are so humble and disciplined so we don’t give them enough space to express themselves and when they go for professional career even when they are facing hard situations at the club they still fear to raise their complaints to coaches” Mubiru stated.
According to Mubiru, the good news is that our players can still be professionally shaped to flourish at international careers.
He urged coaches to impart knowledge in players concerning professional football and ensure they are well prepared always.
“We have to go back to roots on ground as coaches and prepare, teach, and Impart extra knowledge to our players and when journalists start to judge football basing on quality and quantity of football actions per match than mere goals, it will give is the zeal and courage as coaches to prepare a footballer to play a real professional football” He added.
Ibrahim Sekaja, Denis Onyango, Micheal Azira, Henry Karungi, Geofrey Massa, David Obua, Yasser Mugerwa are some of the few Ugandans that have succeeded in professional careers.
