Commenting on the partnership, Jean-Michel Aulas, President of the seven time French champions said, “We are very happy to realize today a new step in our international development through the partnership with Rova Sports Academy.
Top French Ligue 1 club Olympique Lyonnais have entered a three-year partnership with Kenyan sports academy Rova Sports Academy.
Commenting on the partnership, Jean-Michel Aulas, President of the seven time French champions said, “We are very happy to realize today a new step in our international development through the partnership with Rova Sports Academy. The wonderful project led by Rose Maghas and her teams illustrates Olympique Lyonnais’ desire to support structuring and lasting local initiatives to promote the emergence of female and male talents. This new cooperation opens the club’s doors to a new territory with great potential, which augurs rich exchanges both in human and structural terms.”
Rova Sports Academy CEO Maghas on her part said, “I am extremely excited to be signing partnership between Rova Sports Academy and Olympique Lyonnais. This means that as a young academy we get to benefit from the expertise from one of the best clubs in youth of development in the world and that the raw talent in Kenya will get an opportunity to go through a well structured and professionally run academy program. It also signifies our commitment to our core values that are echoed by this partnership.”
Launched in 2019 in Nairobi, Rova SA is a private multisport academy developed with the aim of revealing the Kenyan athletes of tomorrow. Based on the American model of education, Rova Sports Academy offers an excellent "sport-study" project to support the best young talents from 10 to 17 years old to the top professional level.
Eager to place football at the heart of its expertise, the Kenyan academy has chosen Olympique Lyonnais to continue developing its elite program. For this purpose, a delegation of experts led by Jean-François VULLIEZ (OL Academy Director) went to Nairobi at the end of September 2021 in order to carry out a sports diagnosis of the structure, and jointly define the axes of collaboration.
Based on the sharing and adaptation of the OL methodology to the Kenyan context, this technical cooperation will emerge through privileged exchanges between the two entities, the regular visits of OL technical executives on site to support Rova SA in building local expertise, and in the development of a pool of local coaches for the project supervision.
After Lebanon, Senegal, Vietnam, China, Brazil, Morocco, the United States and Portugal, Olympique Lyonnais is happy to open its know-how to a 9th international territory and to become the first Top 20 European club to formalize an elite technical cooperation with a local actor in Kenya.