The inclusion of 19 year-old Lille forward,
Divork Origi into Belgium’s provisional team for next month’s global football
extravaganza in Brazil, has broken hearts of many football fans in Kenya. We
all had hoped to see him represent Kenya, but it was not to be.
Harambee Stars tactician, Adel Amrouche
unsuccessfully courted the striker to don the national colors and partner Dennis
Oliech of AJ Ajaccio. In glee, part of the football fraternity had imagined he
would oblige. Sadly to them, he did not and opted to join the Belgium team
bound the World Cup. To cut a long story short, the chapter is closed. The son
to Mike Okoth, one of Kenya’s best ever strikers will never play for Kenya!
Perhaps we should look at some reasons and know why it was never going to be.
We fantasized too far and wishful thinking got
the better of us, the optimistic nation. Call it sterile imagination! Our
football is simply chaotic and sobriety is alien, our administrators fight and
fuse over endless battles, fights that at best slowly kill our football and the
future generations who dream of representing Kenya. We rank low and we are only
sinking deeper, while Belgium ranks up high among the world’s best. Stars like
Eden Hazard (Chelsea), Adnaj Januzaj and Marruoane Fellaini (Manchester United)
and Therbaut Courtois (Atletico Madrid) are a generation to watch! Add robust
Manchester City captain Vincent Company, Arsenal’s Thomas Vermalean and Aston
Villa’s Chris Benteke. Would have Divork given up this company to come and join
our squabble-ridden and politicized football, played in so unfriendly
conditions? No, it could not have happened. The lad deserves a place in
progressive soccer and Belgium will surely give him that.
We barely play at the continent’s greatest
showpiece (African Nations Cup), we are simply among the dark-horses of African
soccer. We challenge at regional level and struggle to win modest championships
like Confederation of East and Central African Football (CECAFA)! Most of our
friendlies are equally pathetic, so shambolically organized and against weak
opponents from whom we barely gain anything! Belgium plies against the world’s
best in Europe and across the world and in the best facilities. Luring Divork
Origi to Kenya, a young talent with such phenomenal career ahead would have
been unfair, morally wrong! Belgium has given the lad a chance to play in the
world cup. Kenya, on the other hand have not and cannot grant him this chance:
the dream of all footballers in the world.
Lastly, Kenya has had no part in this lad’s
mercurial rise to the top. He has developed from the academy of Racing Genk Club
in Belgium and gradually rose to the potent attacker he has turned out to be
for Lille in France’s Ligue 1. Not until his performance all along started
hitting the news last year, than we started courting him. Attempts by Stars
coach, Adel Amrouche were just too ambitious! Origi turned all these down. This
week’s inclusion into Coach Marc Wilmot’s Belgium party for the World Cup
clearly closed this chapter.
Young Origi is going to Brazil as part of the
Belgium team, not as a Kenyan. The media and sections of our footballing class
should stop this obsession with a Kenyan going to the globe’s biggest football
bonanza. Let us not fight this hard to have a bite of the omelet that we all
did not break an egg to prepare! We are proud of Southampton’s midfield cog,
Victor Mugubi, his elder brother, MacDonald Mariga at Inter Milan (Italy) and
Dennis Oliech at AJ Ajaccio (France). These are our sons
and products of our homegrown soccer. We can churn more of such talents and
slowly march to football greatness. Let us stick to that and stop mourning
Origi’s loyalty switch to Belgium.
Best of luck Divork,
make your father’s country proud and fly the Belgium flag high!
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