Harambee Starlets forward signs for Swedish club

Kwale Starlets and Harambee Starlets’ striker Elizabeth Katungwa has landed a deal with Swedish outfit Dalhem IF.

The 21-year-old striker left for Stockholm, Sweden via Doha Qatar aboard Qatar Airways on Monday night alongside another Kenyan international Mary Kinuthia.

Kinuthia has been playing for Dalhem since 2017 and had returned to the country for holidays before the coronavirus struck forcing her to wait for international flights to resume.

Katungwa, who helped Kwale Girls High School to win Coast Region's first ever national secondary schools football title in 2018, was later voted football player of the year schools category during the 2019 Sportsman of the Year Awards (SOYA).

According to Kwale Girls High School coach Mukasa Amboko, Katungwa - who has been training individually in Kwale to keep fit - has been on the radar of Swedish scouts for the past two years following her splendid display both at school and national team level.

“One of the Swedish scouts secretly watched Katungwa lead our school team to the National title at Hill School in Eldoret and followed us to the East Africa Secondary School games in Rwanda in March 2018 where Katungwa scored the winning goal to win Kwale girls and Kenya gold medal in football after a long wait,” said Amboko adding all this was happening without their knowledge.

According to Amboko, Dalhem first made contact with Katungwa in March 2019 just after the Soya awards. It's then that he recalled katungwa, who had competed her secondary education at Kwale Girls in 2018, to start training with the school team for fitness purposes.

“In March last year, one of the scouts asked about the availability of Katungwa. Fortunately she was called up to the national team and that convinced the scout and Dalhem that she was the kind of player they were looking for,” explained Amboko.

Katungwa was set to fly out early this year after finalising personal terms with Dalhem but could not travel because of the Covid-19 pandemic which saw Kenya restrict all international flights for four months till August 1.

“At that point it was important for me to draw individual training program for her to keep fit until last week when finally restrictions were lifted and Dalhem facilitated acquisition of her residence VISA and air tickets,” Amboko said.