WE MUST SAVE OUR FOOTBALL.In exactly five days from, all eyes will be on Gabon and Equatorial Guinea as the continents 14 best teams join the co-hosts for the 2012 African Nations Cup. Sadly, Kenya will once again be watching from the terraces as these countries do battle for the title of the continent’s football champions. This is indeed a bitter pill to swallow for the many football lovers, who have had to put up with disappointment after disappointment, from our footballers and administrators. The glory days of yester years are now a thing of the past as our country’s football fortunes continue to dwindle, year after year. Whereas football is an outdoor game, played on the pitch, we have now become used to playing it in our courtroom’s and boardrooms. We are now used to our shameless football administrators, fighting for control of the world’s most popular sport in the country. Since the turn of the millennium, Kenya’s football prospects have continued to nosedive, day after day as boardroom wars, courtroom battles and persistent wrangles take the centre stage. As a result, most of our country’s football talent has gone down the drain. Football in the country has been raped by greedy and narrow- minded leaders, who purport to have the interests of the beautiful game at heart. Interestingly, two parallel football federations, namely Football Kenya Limited and Kenya Football Federation, have all claimed authority of the beautiful game in the country. Football Kenya limited (FKL), has claimed authority at the national level while Kenya Football Federation (KFF) has for long enjoyed authority and support at the grassroots level, running the nationwide league. Add Kenya Premier limited (KPL), that has up to now professionally and successively the national league and you have a real debacle. KPL was formed by players and other football stakeholder, who had grown impatient with the endless wrangles between the FKL and KFF. However, their not so- friendly run ins with the FKL over the running and management of the national soccer team, Harambee Stars, have only served to impede the sport’s healthy growth. Fierce confrontations over the release of players for national duty and management of the team, have dealt a severe blow to the game. Consequently, Harambee Stars has continued to plummet in the FIFA rankings. Near misses, frequent disappointments and overnight sacking of coaches, have characterized the mess that is our football. Whenever, we make a step forward we have always made two backwards. A good example is in the 2007-2008 season, when Harambee Stars, under the tutelage of the then coach, Francis Kimanzi, was on a steady rise to claiming their stake among the continent’s footballing powerhouses. Their attractive football was slowly drawing fans back to the stadia, equally matching up with the continent’s big-guns and a place at the global soccer bonanza, in South Africa in 2010, looked so real. We were even ranked an all-time high of 68 by FIFA. All of a sudden, misunderstanding s arose between Kimanzi and the FKL. Kimanzi had to eat the humble pie and was sent packing. This marked the start of our football tribulations as Harambee Stars went back to their losing ways. We even fell to an all-time low of 135 in the FIFA rankings. As a country, our game went from win some, lose some to win none, lose all. However, in October 2011, the long awaited joint football elections were successively held. Sammy Nyamweya won the chairman’s seat while Sammy Sholei, took the vice-chairman’s post. Losing candidates conceded defeat, but not without some harsh words on how the elections were marred by malpractices. After years in the football oblivion, Kenya seemed to have rediscovered the track to football glory, however treacherous it might turn out to be. The new unified Football Kenya Federation brought some sigh of relief to lovers of the beautiful game. The fact that we shall be watching from our sitting-rooms as the rest of Africa locks horns for the next three weeks, must surely get the new football administrators and the government from their comfort zone. As a country, we should learn lessons, no matter how harsh and make sure that we do not miss out on South Africa in 2013. This is because this provides the best way to playing on the global scene in Brazil in 2014. It has been more than six years, since Kenya lastly played at the continental showpiece. The last time was in 2004 in Tunisia, which was a disastrous outing for us. Harambee stars conceded an aggregate of six goals against Senegal and Mali. We got a little consolation by walloping Burkina Faso by three goals to nil. Since then it has been a tale of near misses. We missed out on 2006, 2008, 2010 and we have yet again missed out this year. Haphazard preparations, unpaid allowances to the players and frequent firing of coaches have all led our football to the abyss. We have had more coaches at the helm of Harambee Stars than the Somali national team, a country that has been torn apart by war! The fact that they once eliminated us from an under- 17 qualifier, further exemplifies this shocking statistic. Our clubs have also been dismal on the continental scene. The only bright spot was last year, when Sofapaka, fell short of the Confederations Cup’s group stage after losing out to Tunisia’s Cub Africain, by a solitary goal on aggregate. This is the same club that made history by winning the national football championship, on its maiden attempt in 2008. Barely three years down the line, they knocked out continental giants like Egypt’s Ismailia and St Limpopo of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Achieving this was no walk in the park, as the club had massively invested in their playing unit. The newly formed Football Kenya Federation office should borrow a leaf from this and do the same to Harambee Stars. The other remarkable achieving by Kenyan clubs was in 1989 by Gor Mahia, who won the Mandela Cup and Tusker, then Kenya Breweries, who lost in the final of the Africa Cup Winners Cup to Motema Pembe of Democratic Republic of Congo in 1994. All these had taken in a lot of sacrifice. We must now stand up and stop being the continent’s whipping boys in football, both at the national and club levels. Harambee Stars and our dear clubs should match the continent’s best. The talent is in abundance, only good will and shrewd administration is lacking. We must stamp out politics and corruption from the running of the beautiful game. Structures must also be put in place to nature talent, just as the world’s best football nations like Brazil and Spain, among others, have done. The newly elected football body and all other football stakeholders must collectively address these bottlenecks. This will provide the only way to the footballing Caanan that we so much as a country, yearn to get to. Football is the world’s most popular and enjoyable game, full of raw emotion and we can ill-afford to be spectators as the continental and global showpieces are staged. We must compete at these levels with the world’s best. We are happy when our favorite teams win. We are equally as sad when they lose. We must come together and save our football from sinking into oblivion.