• This is after three players from Tana River county boys football team were disqualified from taking part in the Talanta Hela inter-county football tournament Coast edition hosted in Mombasa county for failing to prove their age.
Image: JOHN CHESOLI
No age-cheating will be allowed in the Talanta Hela inter-county football tournament, the Kenya Academy of Sports said on Thursday.
This is after three players from Tana River county boys football team were disqualified from taking part in the Talanta Hela inter-county football tournament Coast edition hosted in Mombasa county for failing to prove their age.
This forced the Tana River team to field only eight players against Taita Taveta county but still managed to win 2-0.
The Talanta Hela is a government initiative aimed at spotting football talent among players aged 19 and under.
Mombasa county sports executive Ken Ambani said the Talanta Hela project seeks to spot football talents that will be placed in the Under 19 and Under 23 national teams which can be feeder teams to the senior national team Harambee Stars.
He, however, said age-cheating will not be tolerated.
“Rules are very clear. We cannot allow anyone above 19 years to play. We are very serious about this. We want fair play,” Ambani said.
The winner of the coast edition will represent the region at the national finals.
All the six coast region counties have two teams each, the boys' and the girls' teams.
“We have scouts who are looking to spot the talents that will be put in the national academy,” Ambani said.
Doreen Odhiambo, the Kenya Academy of Sports CEO, said though the Talanta Hela initiative deals with both sports and arts, this year they started with sports, specifically football.
“So the other years we’ll be going to the other sports,” Odhiambo said.
Some 2,000 young people scouted from across the country were accommodated at the national sports camp for a week in Nairobi.
They were scouted from the schools' ball games.
The Talanta Hela football tournament, launched at the Kipchoge Keino Stadium in Eldoret, has been divided into 12 regions.
These include North and South Rift regions, Nyanza North and South regions, Western, Central, Coast, Eastern, Lower Eastern, Upper Eastern, and North Eastern.
Odhiambo said this is in preparation for the possible hosting of the 2027 AFCON, which Kenya has bid for.
“When you host an international tournament like that, you have to have a good team,” Odhiambo said.
She said this is also part of the journey to the 2030 World Cup.
Odhiambo said the project also seeks to address the inconsistencies the country has had in the Under-17 football category.
The winners of every region will directly qualify for the nationals.
The first runners-up will go for play-offs and the best four will join the other 12 at the nationals.
The winners at the national level will pocket Sh5 million, the first runners-up will get Sh3 million while the second runners-up will pocket Sh2 million.
All teams that will qualify for the national finals will get Sh500,000 each.
Each of the 12 regions will have six scouts spotting talent.
The players identified during the national finals will attend a one-week camp in Nairobi.
"Those who will not make it to Nairobi will be hosted in regional camps,” Odhiambo said.
“We also would like clubs to scout talents from these places. We are planning to bring in foreign scouts,” she said.
Shadrack Mutungi, the Taita Taveta sports executive, said this initiative exposes the latent talents that stay hidden in the villages in remote areas.