Introduction of youth tourney is a plus for KPL in terms of football development

The Kenyan Premier League (KPL) has come up with another brilliant idea of introducing an under-18 tournament.

The tournament, which starts in April, will run alongside the league and is meant to help local clubs build youth sides as a nursery to their ageing squads.

It is worth noting that this idea was mooted by the current Football Kenya Limited officials a few years ago but it remained just that and Patrick Naggi, who was behind it, never followed up at all.

It is also well known that our national teams have continued to suffer from lack of a structured feeder clubs to replace those who are getting out. Besides, the country does not have any strong youth programmes and it is always a crush programme to pick age teams for various competitions.

Obviously this always ends up in over age players being picked to play. The new competition run by KPL will go along way to fill up a huge gap and ensure there is continuity. All the 16 clubs must seriously take this competition considering that all successful teams in different parts of the world always have youth sides to replace ageing players in the main team.

Like KPL assured, there is need for strictness on age cheating. Teams which field over age sides must be disqualified from the competition.

FKL must also seek to get involved in the same and ensure that future age group teams are picked at this level of competition.