National Juvenile Festival to open league season
The Ghana Football Association (GFA) is contemplating reintroducing a competition known as the National Juvenile Festival as a prelude to the football calendar, beginning this year.
The GFA president, Kurt E.S. Okraku, told the Graphic Sports that the FA originally planned to organise the competition after the season but was compelled to revise its notes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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“We have introduced or reintroduced the National Juvenile Festival, which will be held at the end of the season. As we speak now, we are thinking of bringing it back before the football season starts to place more premium on youth development.
“There will be regional inter-club championship festivals and there will be regional teams also involved in the festival. So, let’s say that Greater Accra XI, Western Region youth and the regional team will all meet at the festival so there is a lot of premium placed on juvenile football,” Mr Okraku explained.
The FA boss pointed out that there had been realistic policies, strategies and regulations on juvenile football, coupled with the adoption of game centres, for clubs to give more premium on grassroot football to instill discipline, fair play, patriotism and sportsmanship in juvenile football.
He further revealed that the FA, for the first time, had also introduced U-15 national team boys and U-15 national team girls competitions as part of the juvenile developmental agenda.
He noted that the FA had gone through the regulations for juvenile football and also adopted the regulations governing juvenile football and game centres in all regions across the country.
“The committee has identified game centres that are going to be used by the juvenile clubs. An example is the McDan [community park] facility at La, the Madina facility which will be soon opened, the Asamoah Gyan facility at Accra Academy, the new pitch at Teshie-Nungua, which are all in the Greater Accra Region, and same is applicable in the other regions,” he stressed.
Mr Okraku stated that he volunteered to chair the National Juvenile Committee this time around to give energy to the committee, which has other enterprising members to help restore the fortunes of juvenile football in the country.