When I think about local football in Kenya, I remember a song we used to sing many years ago when were kids. It goes mjinga alijenga mchangani na mwerevu alijenga mwambani. In other words, the says that the wise man built his house on the rock while the fool built his house on sand and when the storm came his house fell with a thud!!
That, unfortunately, is how football is being run in this country. We are running football in a jua kali manner and no wonder we are not moving anywhere. We are just running around in circles like a dog running after its tail. It can never catch its tail. Instead, it will die trying.
You do not to be genius to understand that if you want to build a strong, multi-storeyed house, you need to lay down a very strong foundation for the structure. You can only do that by digging deep and putting in place material that will carry the weight of the structure and enable it to stand.
We need a deep foundation in the running of football in this country. We will only lay this strong foundation by starting to build football from the grassroots and then moving upwards. But today, many in the football fraternity are fixated with the national team, forgetting that the national team has no players of its own. Players come from the grassroots where football is played and where we need a strong foundation.
I said that we are running football in a jua kali manner. Running football jua kali-style means that we are doing things in an informal manner. But how can you run football in an informal manner? Is it not ironic that even the national team is run informally and not in a professional manner?
For starters we have two bodies, Football Kenya Limited and Kenya Football Federation running different leagues in the country. This is our first problem. The international football federation (FIFA) can never deal with two bodies in any one country. They will only recognize and deal with one body. Therefore, any other body is wasting the time of those participating in its activities since they cannot be involved in any FIFA events and cannot benefit from any FIFA funds.
The other thing is that the two bodies are not complementing the activities of each other but are working at cross-purposes. Each is trying to appear the best in the eyes of the public. This means that they sometimes do things that undermine their opponents. By doing this, they are in essence undermining football in the country. Their actions and activities are not helping the growth and development of football in the country at all.
Now that Harambee Stars have been bundled out of the World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, the government needs to be courageous enough, step in and do what it is supposed to do: ban the two federations purporting to run football in the country and start building football from square one.
The way things are today in the country, even if we brought in ‘the saviour’ Jose Mourinho to be the coach of the national team, we will not get anywhere. With the kind of management that we have, we still have a long way to go. We need to give the running of football to people who have a heart for football and not politicians masquerading as football administrators.
The leaders of the two football bodies that we have right now are known to have political ambitions. They are trying to use football to gain popularity and then go into politics, where their hearts are. They need to leave football to those who have the interest of the players at heart. This is an industry with the capability of employing thousands of young people and growing our economy. But it is being messed up by politicians.
How come these people have never shown us their blue print for running football? Where is their strategic plan? We know that any organization must have a strategic plan to help it decide what it wants to do, when it will do what it wants to do, and how it will do what it wants to do. This is a basic management and leadership practice. But for our football administrators, wrangling is their second name. Is it any wonder then that no corporate organization wants to put their money on football in this country today?
The other day I heard people trying to put blame on the national coach Antoine Hey for the failure of Harambee Stars to qualify for the World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations. Hey is not our problem. Our problem is Kenyans themselves. These guys were looking for a fall guy to blame and they found it in a foreigner in the name of Hey! We are our own problem and we must own up to our failures.
Once the government bans the two bodies, we need to have elections that will usher in a team that will be recognized by FIFA, which will then concentrate on building football at the grassroots. It is better for Kenyan to stay out of international competitions for two or even three years but then come back with a bang after we have put our house in order.
This is the challenge we are facing and which we must be ready to deal with now or forever forget about having any international football coming into the country!
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