Business owners and
proprietors around Nairobi’s City Stadium are yet to come to terms with their
razed and destroyed investments. The venue which played host to the latest show
of post-match hooliganism by a rowdy section of AFC Leopards’ faithful. Just as
it has been all too common in this year’s Tusker Premier League, TPL 2013
season, this unruly section of Ingw’e faithful has ruined an otherwise decent
match. Violence is slowly taking root in the Kenyan game and apparently is
happening unabated. It has happened
right under the noses of the Football Kenya Federation and the Kenya Premier
League Limited, KPL. Sad scenes and worrisome trends indeed!
The men in the centre
no longer make the final decisions but the unruly do. The fans have perfected
the art of meting out this entire discontentment. It is football the Kenyan
style! This was best exemplified during last month’s Super Eight knock-out
clash between Ingw’e and Chemelil Sugar at the Nyayo Stadium as the match
entered its closing stages. An enraged fan scaled the perimeter fence and
headed straight for the centre referee who had apparently made a wrong call in
a game that Ingw’e was losing. This happened as police officers watched. The
man even had the audacity to splash beer all over his victim’s face as the
police officers took time to respond and players from both teams offered little
help to the besieged whistle-man who had to run for his safety. Events that followed were absolutely
ridiculous as AFC Leopards were banned from the stadium and the game awarded to
Chemelil Sugar. However days later, Ingw’e were reinstated to the stadium and
little or no action taken on these rowdy fans. Kenya Premier League, Football Kenya
Federation, Sports Stadium Management Boards and AFC Leoprds then went to sleep
and have now been awakened by the latest ugly incident where fans looted and
burned business premises around the City Stadium, on Saturday after their team
lost by a solitary goal to Mathare
United. So what is next to stem this?
Last season, Gor Mahia
fans were the culprits of football violence but seem to have passed it onto
their mashemejis. Over the last few seasons, the beautiful name
has not lived up to its name, at least going by what the fans of Kenya’s most
successful clubs that command a near religiously fanatical following have been
doing. Violence is what has best
described games of the two teams, and sadly lives have been lost in recent
derbies at the Nyayo Stadium, most infamously in the 2010 season, whereby a
pre-match stampede resulted into the death of at least four fans. However, it seems our football administrators
never learn and little efforts have been made to stem football violence in
Kenya. One wonders whether we are really waiting for a Cairo-like disaster when
in February 2012, chaos erupted in the infamous Port Said Stadium disaster,
which left more than 70 Al- Ahly fans dead and scores of others injured. This
was after a fiery Al- Masry versus Al Ahly match, when fans took matters into their
own hands and knives, swords, clubs and stones became the weapons of choice as
they sought to mete out anger and frustrations onto each other!
In Kenya, Gor Mahia and
AFC Leopards fans have used stones to settle matters off the pitch, often
leaving innocent business owners, pedestrians and motorists on the receiving
end of matters they knew little of. Violence is slowly being accepted as a way
of football life in Kenya. This is best exemplified by the casual and hands off
approach to matters football violence whenever sections of K’Ogallo and Ingw’e
fans turn into fanatics and football maniacs who are out to kill the beautiful
game. As a nation, Kenya has proved to be a poor student of history, and
disasters have recurred often with devastating losses. But the football
fraternity should not wait till it tastes the sharpness of this deadly sword of
violence with its own flesh!
It is sad and equally
disturbing that the recent gains made in Kenyan football, chief among them
being the live broadcasting of premier league matches by pay television
channel, Super sport and the rise of Victor Mugubi, Dennis Oliech, Macdonald Mariga
and others into Europe’s crème de crème of football have been marred by the
hooliganism and uncouth behavior by some fans in the stands. We have silently
accepted violence as part of Kenyan football. Just as in any other part on the
planet, fans are a responsibility of their clubs. The consequences of
unsporting behavior and rowdiness by the fans are passed onto their clubs and
this should not be any different when it comes to Kenya.Violent behavior chases
away sponsors, scares away some real football fans and gate collection greatly
suffers, property is destroyed, clubs are faced with bans and fans can even
die. Must we wait for this to happen?
Am sure that the
streetwise storylines of Afadhali FIFA isiingilie haya mambo yetu!
rule the air whenever violence breaks out on the stadiums. War unto us if the
Blatter-led body intervenes because players will sell their boots to youngsters
and coaches will switch careers. The ban can be lengthy and equally deterrent.
Our already dilapidated footy grounds will turn into green grazing grounds for
our cows! This unsporting and uncouth section of AFC Leopards should be nipped
in the bud before they land us into serious trouble with FIFA. Am sure that
those informed well enough know that FIFA is not as toothless as most of our
local commissions of inquiry! Football federations who have crossed roads with
FIFA all know this too well and Afc Leopards and Kenyan football administrators
should listen to them!
National federations
and clubs alike have paid the heavy penalties for their fans violent conduct.
The Serbian FA was in December 2012, fined £65,000 when their fans subjected
England’s Danny Rose to racism chants during a European under-21 play -off
match. Russian and Spanish FAs were handed a combined fine of £40,355 in June 2012 for improper conduct of
their fans. At the club level, Italy’s Lazio and Portugal’s Porto have too been
fined as a result of their fans unsporting behavior. In June 2009, Chelsea was fined
£85,000 for failing to control its players and fans
after a stormy semi-final loss to Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League.
These are just some of the incidents where the unsporting behavior of
fans has proved to be a costly affair to their clubs.
These European leagues have a near religious following in Kenya, yet on the
part of stemming football violence we do not always go the European way. This
is a challenge to our football administrators and clubs whose fanatics go march
into the stadiums for the sole purpose of causing violence, all done under the
guise of cheering on their favorite teams!
Let us join hands and
kick violence out of our football fields before FIFA catches up with us!
