Weeks after being appointed the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) Commercial Director, former Harambee Stars forward Taiwo Atieno has revealed his plan to professionalize club football in the country. Following his appointment at the start of the month, Taiwo was tasked with raising resources for youth development and helping KPL clubs to establish funding for the construction of new youth training and development facilities.It is an honour to serve @TheOfficialKPL in this new role as Commercial Director. I will work to raise the Professional standards of football facilities in Kenya. Kenyan football has seen little or no capital investment in youth football. #kenyanfootball #youthfootball pic.twitter.com/bMdzGvDjQa— Taiwo Atieno (@AtienoTaiwoCD) November 11, 2021 Taiwo explained that he plans to have clubs move away from being registered as societies in order to enable potential investors to buy shares just like other sectors of the economy.“The clubs have been operating as societies, we want them to get professionalized and invest youth training and stadia to the clubs in counties because football is now centred around Nairobi,”“The difficulty of societies is that they do not have shares to offer to an investor. An example is most of the hospitality industries are companies and they shares for investors who invest into the hotels, accommodation and operations which is the same as a football club,” Taiwo told KTN News.Taiwo featured for Harambee Stars between 2009 and 2013 and also turned out for a number of lower league English sides including Luton Town, Stevenage, Barnet and Walsall.The 36-year-old admitted that Kenya possesses a plethora of talent and opened up on how he landed the role at KPL as he is set to come up with a strategic plan before the end of the year. PRESS STATEMENT Kenyan Premier League appoints Taiwo Otieno as Commercial Director pic.twitter.com/PZqGssknZO— KPL (@TheOfficialKPL) November 11, 2021 “Africa as a whole has a lot of talent but Kenya especially has a lot of talent, you just need to have the facilities to nature and develop young people not only as sports athletes but also the mental, physical, leadership and capacity building,”“My appointment was by the board which comprises the clubs and my proposal was to them so they appointed me on that basis, I’ve spoken to them about my ambitions and plans and I’m developing my strategic plan by the end of December which I hope will be approved,” he added.
