Rwanda FA Promises Massive Amavubi Rebuild From Grassroots

October 14, 2025

After missing out on ticket to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Rwanda football federation (FERWAFA) president Fabrice Shema has said that his office already a plan in place to prepare the national team from the grassroots.

Shema traveled with Amavubi to South Africa for the last World Cup qualifying round against Hugo Broos’s Bafana Bafana on Tuesday, October 14 in a match where they will be looking to fight for national pride after Benin beat them on Friday, October 10, to end a historic qualification to the world’s most prestigious football tournament.

Since taking office as new FERWAFA president in August, Shema made a host of promising adjustments aimed at putting Rwandan football back to order, signaling his desire to fill the gaps left by his predecessors.

While his administration made immediate increased prize money for clubs, players and coaches to boost the level of performance on the pitch, Shema’s tough assignment lies at finding what would bring Amavubi back the big stage by qualifying for the Africa Cup of the Nations which the country last played in 2004.

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Six to eight months ago, Amavubi were in a position to qualify for the World Cup under the tutelage of Torsten Spittler. However, his exit from the national team marked the beginning of the team’s back-to-back poor results under his successor Adel Amrouche.

Rwanda’s defeat against Benin in Kigali on October 10 raised questions on Amrouche’s coaching tactics which were also reportedly questioned by Samuel Guelette.

Amrouche’s statistics have been unconvincing and the public has already voiced their frustration about his performances since taking the job.

The under-fire Belgian tactician said that defeat against Benin was ‘too difficult to take’ but urged the federation to put more efforts in development to prepare a new generation of the national team.

“If you want to play in such a big tournament, you need to prepare your things from the ground up. It is not about changing the coach, changing the president, changing the manager, etc, just like doing something like a lottery. It is impossible without young players,” Amrouche told journalists in a post-march press conference.

“You need to produce more players, to have a good league and have youth competitions. Don’t think that the World Cup is a place to start with. I asked the technical director to find me a 17-year-old player to select to the national team, but they didn’t find him.”