Alex Apollo, a former trialist of AFC Leopards, is calling upon football clubs to focus on supporting youth teams, especially in light of the club licensing rules.
His call comes in as many top-tier clubs rush to form partnerships with academies to comply with strict CAF rules.
Apollo, the founder of Watamu Sports Academy, emphasized that these clubs should genuinely support these academies by providing resources for player development.
Speaking to People Sport, he said: “We have top clubs rushing to partner with academies. They are not doing this because of club licensing rules. They should now support these academies fully by injecting resources so that we nurture the players into professionals.”
In Kilifi county, a catholic missionary priest from Malta carrying out pastoral work in Watamu, Mario Cassar, has also been supporting the academy which recently participated in the Kuza Talanta Cup-Africa Youth Football Festival in Mombasa.
Cassar appealed to the Kilifi County government and local leaders to extend their support to the charitable work, which goes beyond football to providing education and food for underprivileged young players.
He, too, has made contributions beyond football, including purchasing land to cultivate pineapples.
He offered: “Beyond supporting football from my personal resources and those from my Maltese friends and Kneyanns of goodwill we have done more for the footballers and community and large.”
“We know that young players come from impoverished families and we have supported them in education and getting something to eat.”
Additionally, he went ahead and purchased 11 and a half acres of land where he planted around 50,000 pineapples. The project was successful for a couple of years. Unfortunately, the project has faced challenges due to insufficient rainfall.
Notably, earlier this year, the Kilifi government exceeded its revenue collection target, collecting over Sh1.1 billion, a significant accomplishment.
Governor Gideon Mung’aro plans to implement measures to further boost revenue collection and suggests that some of these funds should be allocated to support charitable organizations and philanthropic initiatives like Cassar’s.
