Where are Amavubi heading to?

FIFA World Cup Qualifers in CAF zone came to the end. Although from the beginning we knew that chances of seeing Rwanda qualifying for the final tournament were low, at some specific moment hopes of everyone that supports Amavubi raised at least a little. Now we know that it was just some blind optimism, but did it have to happen this way? Rwanda didn’t disappoint themselves, but definitely missed a big opportunity to write wonderful history. So, what went and is going wrong?

No matter how you start, but how you end

November 15, 2023. Amavubi with new german coach Torsten Spittler officialy starts their World Cup Qualifers campaign by facing Zimbabwe on their own ground. The match ended 0-0, so the result was as we could’ve expected. Both teams were at the similar level, and Rwanda had behind them some tough time after spending almost 500 hundred days under spanish coach Carlos Alos Ferrer, who didn’t develop at all the national team. So there was a draw, but the playstyle of Amavubi, to be honest, was promising. After watching for many months how they can’t cooperate well with each other, this game against Zimbabwe was really optimistic. And what put even more optimism – second qualifers’ game against South Africa. I think I don’t really need to remind this match. 2-0, absolutely great performance against future bronze medalists of AFCON and upcoming participants of FIFA World Cup 2026. Heroic Fiacre Ntwari, perfect Thierry Manzi, Gilbert Mugisha who made a lot of trouble for SA’s defence, and Innocent Nshuti, who did what he had to do. This game was just excellent. But more than this – it showed how much potential is in Amavubi.

Later, after 7 months, Rwanda faced Benin and Lesotho in another international football break. And even they lost against Benin, they once again showed that they can compete on the difficult ground. They lost, but not without brave fighting. The game against Lesotho brought 3 points, but to be honest – there was a lot of trouble in this game. But the most important was that they won and grabbed points once again.

Then we needed to wait 9 months to another World Cup Qualifers games. It was because from September to Novemeber Amavubi had to play in AFCON 2025 Qualifers. And one big thing changed during this time – coach. Now we’ll leave this topic and come back to it later, but it changed a lot. Under new coach, although the squad wasn’t weaker – I think even completly opposite – they were able to grab only 4 points in remaining 6 games. Disappointed draw against Lesotho in Kigali, win against Zimbabwe in South Africa, and catastrophic losses against Nigeria (2 times), Benin and South Africa. When we will look at the stats – among these 6 games, 2 of them (Zimbabwe and Benin) wasn’t that bad. But the playstyle was completly different, wasn’t similar at all to that one that we used to see under Torsten Spittler. And these other losses, to be honest, rivals weren’t that strong that Rwanda couldn’t grab at least a point from them. So, is the coach a problem?

Amavubi, save yourself before it’s not too late

My answer is – mostly yes. From the start I wasn’t a fan of hiring Adel Amrouche as a Amavubi’s coach. I watched many games of Tanzania when he was in charge, and Jesus Christ… I’ve never seen a team who has played this boring and not organized. Taifa Stars played 9 games under his managment, and guess what? In none of these games they scored 2 or more goals. I felt so sorry for Tanzania’s supporters that they had to deal with him, but when I saw that now he’ll be a Rwanda’s problem, I just grabbed my head and couldn’t believe.

To be honest, Adel Amrouche’s football isn’t just boring and not organized as I said. It’s also without any clear idea of in which direction develop team’s playstyle. Sometimes I’m asking myself – how he became a professional football coach? Maybe in the past he was good and had some passion inside, but now it clearly doesn’t exist. And what pissing me off too – this guy doesn’t see problem in himself. He’s trying to escape any bigger question about disappointing results, talking about absolute nonsense. I know it might sound not like a serious thing, but I truly believe that being honest at the press conference, showing respect to journalists, is the way that you proof that you really know what you’re doing. And if you’re escaping questions, changing topics, for me you clearly don’t. And okay, we can consider that he might be afraid of being sacked off as it was with Torsten Spittler. Rwanda under him was great, promising and with huge potential. He didn’t manage to qualify to AFCON, but even this they looked really good in these games. But the real reason why he was sacked is complaining about FERWAFA decisions. Even he was mostly saying the truth, they fired him because they didn’t want to hear critisizm in the public space. So there’s an option that Amrouche might be little scared about talking too much on press conferences, but for me that’s not the point.

For me he’s just a mercenary who doesn’t really care about the national team. He will fullfill his contract, grab a lot of money, and walk away to some other country that will be fooled by his coaching skills, which really are so bad. As I’m a Polish, I wll give an example from our national team. Few years ago portugese coach Paulo Sousa became our manager. From the begenning he was talking delusional things at the press conference, avoiding the real, hard questions. His coaching skills were good – I won’t say otherwise because under him Poland had one of the best times in recent years. But the problem was that he didn’t really want to work there. When he received a bigger offer from brazilian team Flamengo, he just quit, leaving whole national team confused. What I’m trying to say – I believe that in national teams football the most important thing is to find a coach who will be truly devoted to work there. Who will show this on the training ground, by communicating to players (which is really bad from Amrouche), solving problems in a team or even answering questions at press conferences. You can have Pep Guardiola, but if he won’t have a desire of achieving something with this specific national team, his work won’t bring any big success. I know it’s hard to find coach like this, especially foreigner because there is no good rwandan coach that can overtake Amavubi. But example of Tosten Spittler shows that it’s possible. His CV were clearly weaker than Amrouche’s at the moments when they were hired. But it doesn’t matter, because it was Spittler who build strong team which represented its country with clear playstyle idea, proud and fighting. FERWAFA, fire Amrouche before it will be too late.


Problems to solve

We can all agree that Rwanda isn’t a strong football nation. Sad reality is, we will probably never see Amavubi winning World Cup or even AFCON. But football isn’t just about winning – it’s mostly about bringing joy. We gain joy by playing football, by watching it, by discussing about it, by supporting our favorite teams. But this whole joy depends on how we will performance. If we will play bad or our team will have poor results, then there’s no way of getting joy. Football is a great tool that can be used in many ways – political, propaganda, advertisment. But it’s all for the people, same as national teams. Every nation should be proud of its national team, and there’s no need of winning only to give this proud to the nation. You can still losing, but if fans see that you fought well, tried your best, then they will be proud of you. And for me, right now there’s not too many things in Rwanda National Team that simple rwandan citizen can be proud of.

Let’s leave the topic with coach, because I wrote enough. There are also other problems that could be solved. With the one thing the most – clarifying the matter with the players removed from the national team. Hakim Sahabo, Samuel Gueulette and York Rafael, to be specific. There’s no doubt that every one of them would be a great addition to every rwanda national team’s coach squad and would level up the quality. But they can’t, because they were removed from receiving call-ups. I’m guessing the topic isn’t easy, because the same decision towards Sahabo and Rafael was made by Torsten Spittler. We’ve never understood the main, clear reason about this decision, but after another coach decided to use this method, then there’s clearly something wrong with players’ behavior. But at the same time I truly believe that there’s always a solution, compromise. Rwanda isn’t that strong to just leave players like Sahabo and Gueulette especially and act like they can do well without them. No, they can’t. I’m not gonna judge FERWAFA that much in this situation, because I believe that they tried to solve this problem. But did they use all them efforts? I would doubt.

Other problems, like corruption and bad managment, are well-known. But in these things I have big optimism, because as soon as Fabrice Shema became new FERWAFA president, the whole board started to clear some issues like old debts or cooperate with law enforcement agencies in corruption cases. And now it’s good time to solve these problems – Amavubi aren’t ahead of any big tournament or crucial games. If big changes, like cleaning dead bodies left by old managment or changing a coach must be done, it’s better to do them right now.

The problem with Rwanda National Team has its long roots deep in rwanda football at all. If we want to see Amavubi who will bring proudness to their supporters, we need to start changing things from the lowest levels. And this requires professional and honest people in charge, who will make decisions not based on their wallets, but based on what football should gives people – happiness. Because all we want in life is Joy. From football and not only.

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