A decade now, and
still counting. It has been a lengthy 10 years since Harambee Stars last graced
the African Nations Cup in, Tunis Tunisia. All qualifying campaigns have ended
in disappointment and acrimony. With each disastrous attempt to qualify for the
continental championship, either the playing unit gets roasted or the technical
bench is sent packing. However, the administrators of the game at Football
Kenya Federation (FKF), formerly Kenya Football Federation (KFF), remain
unmoved and untouched. They are the untouchables who cannot take responsibility
for the slow death that our football is dying! FKF does not run football, it
has ruined football!
For all the suffering
that local football lovers have endured for a decade and perhaps will have to
put up with for the next few years, can our football administrators deem it
morally fit to step down and usher in new ideas to run Kenyan football? Will
Sammy Nyamweya continue to comfortably go on sacking the entire technical
benches of Harambee Stars from the comfort of his armchairs whenever the
national team flatters to deceive on the continental scene? What happened to
the moral conscience that whenever a leader can resign from office and let new
people to take over the helm? The administration of Kenyan football is at best
wanting.
For instance, the
frustrations and squabbles at the then Kenya Football Federation area key
reason why the clubs came together in
2004 to form an independent body to run the local championship in the form of
Kenya Premier League (KPL). The premier league has greatly flourished and even
wooed in sponsors in the form of giant global broadcaster, Supersport and giant
beer manufacturer, East African Breweries (EABL). Premier league clubs have
thus been able to pay their players decently besides seeing the local talent
being beamed live to the entire world whenever in action. This is the result of
the decent running of affairs that KPL has been able to do.
Is it hard to
replicate the same at the Football Kenya Federation? When will the same old
faces that have so miserably failed step aside and let fresh minds run the
national office? Maybe new brains and especially retired players in the shape
of Musa Otieno, legends such as Mohamoud Abbas, Oscar Kadenge or Tobias Ocholla
among others can bring back able management and administration of the game. But
if I remember how former national Vice chairman, Sammy Sholei and Nairobi
branch chairman, Dan Shikanda and Hussein Terry were bundled out of office,
then we might have to wait longer. Remember that this was at a time that elections
in the national football body had brought a ray of hope and a wind of change
had started to blow. However, it was never to be and the three had to go.
However for the
interests of a nation and her love for football, we should borrow a leaf from
our counterparts in Europe and other parts of the world, whereby elected
leaders choose to resign from office and usher in new heads to bring fresh
ideas into the management of football, thus ensuring football success. If
Nyamweya and co cannot leave office, then they should shape up, embrace modern
administration and management of our national team, just as KP has done to the
clubs.
Does it take the fact
that in the last 10 years, Harambee Stars have won the regional CECAFA title
once, that we have not played in the African Nations Cup for a decade now or
the embarrassing elimination by Lesotho from the pre-qualifiers for Morocco
2015, to know that our national team running, management and structure needs a
re-think?
We all know that you
can never do things the same way, expecting different or better results!
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