CAF Beach soccer instructor who is also Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA) competitions director, Ali Mwebe has singled put the inadequate availability of beach soccer facilities in Uganda as one of the country’s pitfalls in the development of that particular game.
Mwebe was addressing the Uganda Sports Press Association (USPA) members in an interactive education workshop about the laws, rules and regulations that govern beach soccer world over.
We have the players, we now have three FIFA Beach soccer referees, there are competitions but we do not have so many standard beach soccer pitches
Uganda Beach Soccer Association (UBSA) was mandated by FUFA to organize all the beach soccer programs in Uganda.
For the past seven years, USBA has organized a number of events at Lido beach, off the shores of Lake Victoria in Entebbe.
Recently, the water levels at Lido rose and one of the pitches became unusable because of the small size.
Ray of Hope:
Perhaps, Mwebe remains positive, Uganda will have a state of art standard inland beach soccer pitch that will be constructed given resources and time.
For a long time now, we have held discussions with the management of Nelson Mandela National Stadium, Namboole for provision of land to construct a standard beach soccer pitch. We shall continue to engage them
In 2014, when Uganda hosted Ghana in the CAF Beach soccer qualifier, UBSA booked at the nearby spacious Sports Beach although they were prompted to import finer sand to better that of Sports beach.
Last year, Busoga University managed to construct a beach soccer pitch that was used at the 16th Inter-University Games.
It remains to be seen whether UBSA’s dreams of owning a standard beach soccer facility live to pass.