AT least four members of Rwanda’s national football team, including its captain, have absconded in Germany, apparently in the hope of playing for professional teams in Belgium, Rwandan officials said on Tuesday.
Nicholas Ntare, secretary-general of the Rwanda Amateur Football Association which is responsible for the team, said the players failed to show up at a training ground in the German city of Bitburg last Tuesday.
They were in the city since the beginning of the month with 24 other Rwandan players on a government-sponsored training mission in preparation for the 2002 World Cup.
“What we’ve heard is that some of our boys had run from the camp and that’s all,” Ntare told reporters. “It was very sad to us, not for me alone, for the whole country.
A German diplomat in the central African nation confirmed the report but said eight team members had fled, apparently to take up offers from Belgian football clubs.
Ntare said it is not the first time Rwandan players have abandoned the team in search of better opportunities abroad.
“We lost six players in Paris in 1997, but this is economic, not political,” Ntare said.
Ntare said the players included the captain of the Rwandan team, Jean-Paul Nsengiyumva, along with three others: Janvier Ngendahayo, Saidi Kayaye and Jeannot Abdul Uwimana.