In a bid to nurture football talent in the country, the Safaricom Next Generation has this week unveiled 75 boys and girls who will join the My Proffessional Dreams (MPD) Academy. The academy is designed to identify and nurture football talent. The finalists include 57 boys and 18 girls who will be offered coaching, nutrition development, mental exercises and testing fixtures as well as trials at professional football clubs.
Between September and November last year, the program embarked on an initiative to discover talented youngsters aged between 11 and 16 years from a variety of social classes across the country. Eight tryouts were held and participant’s skills, speed, fitness, agility and their understanding of the game were accessed.
According to the MPD Academies chairman, Terry Oneill some of the players could be selected to travel to Portugal for trials in the coming months depending on their progress. He continued to say, “We are keen on producing a new generation of young professional footballers who will present Kenya both regionally and in world championships. We identified a large number of talented young people throughout the trials and although many of them did not make it to the top 75, it is clear that this country needs more football programmes in order to channel all that talent into good use.”
MPD Academies was founded in the United Kingdom in 2012 to identify and nurture talent in young athletes from all over the world, and has so far had successful programmes in Dubai, England and Wales. The Kenyan academy is the first full time academy for the brand. The elite football training academy offers players coaching at the highest level, with ten leading UEFA qualified coaches – including former international professional coaches from countries such as England, Nigeria and Portugal – expected to be flown in for training and mentorship.