FKF President Nick Mwendwa is congratulated by his predecessor Sam Nyamweya following FKF elections in 2016. [File, Standard]
Clay Muganda
Our moribund footballing bodies do not seem to care about tomorrow and are busy fighting old battles on the wrong playground
Last evening, Kenya’s football fans had something to smile about.
After months of watching re-plays of matches they had watched and those they never watched and later staring at blank screens, Germany’s Bundesliga came to their rescue with live matches.
The coronavirus hit and the sports world took the biggest blow, so to write – and now organisers of all these major sporting events are looking for the safest ways possible to get their activities back on the rightful playgrounds.
In Europe, the Germans have taken the first step with football, ahead of English Premier League which many Kenyans identify with more than they do with Kenyan Premier League, that semblance of a football league that is run by people for whom application of common sense is an alien concept.
SEE ALSO: English football: Promotion, relegation to go on
Ideally, all football leagues in Europe, which have become the SI Unit for football, have their bosses busy in their virtual boardrooms, strategising on how to cover the financial shortfalls they have suffered and how to prevent further losses now that they are not making any money, which ideally is their core business.
Nearer home, of course things are a bit different. Our moribund footballing bodies do not seem to care about tomorrow and are busy fighting old battles on the wrong playground.
These battles, even if won, will have little or no impact on the growth of Kenyan football, which is in a comatose state and can only degenerate in to vegetative state but never rise to any meaningful levels worth talking about.
When Nick Mwendwa became the Football Kenya Federation president on February 10, 2016 there was a collective sigh of relief in certain quarters. His friends were over-excited; they were happy, they were celebrating.
Not because they knew he would do much to uplift Kenyan football, but because they had eventually got rid of Sam Nyamweya, a man who had, like Nick now, taken Kenyan football to greater heights – in his head.
SEE ALSO: DCI grill Mwendwa over Sh244m, player bonuses
Nyamweya’s friends, real or imagined, were not happy. They were not as elated as Nick’s chums and there was gloom in their camp – but Nyamweya and Nick are cut from the same cloth, and their supporters are one and the same, at most when it comes to not applying common sense while looking for ways through which Kenyan football can grow.
After Nick’s election, I asked: Is the best over and the worst yet to come for Kenyan football? (See https://www.sde.co.ke/article/2000191729/is-the-best-over-and-the-worst-yet-to-come-for-kenyan-football).
True to form, I did not wait for an answer. I did not want an answer because I was pretty sure it would be known in due course.
To blame Nick only for what is happening to Kenyan football at the moment is unfair just as it is unfair to blame Nyamweya only for what was happening before Nick took over. They are captives. They are hostages. Of their own cabals. They do not live in the real world where those who manage football activities do. They live in courts of law.
While footballing heads in other countries are working towards recovery of football in the post-coronavirus era, Nick and Nyamweya, through their agents and cronies in different sectors including the Media, are fighting it out in a court of law or some legal arbitration entity.
SEE ALSO: Tribunal suspends ruling on FKF assets
Kenyans have lost count of the number of legal matters Nick has had to deal with since he became the head of FKF, but you should not be surprised if they are more than the number of passes all Harambee Stars strikers have made in international matches in the same period.
Does Nick bring these cases against him all by himself? No, and yes. No because there are cabals out there to prove that he is not competent enough to run Kenyan football and are hell bent on making it hard for him to achieve any success.
Yes, because Nick gives them all the arsenal they need to attack him – he shows them how and where to find his faults through his belligerence and abrasive way of handling issues.
Nick is always on the defensive; there is no question he answers in a sportsmanship manner; he is always at war, always the victim, the man with his back against the wall because he is fighting detractors who want to distract him from taking Kenyan football to greater heights – in is head.
Nick, what happened to the money the Government gave to Harambee Stars for Afcon? Nick, what happened to the OB vans? Nick, where are the replica kits you said will be available for sale to fans? Nick, what is going on with the elections of FKF? Nick, why did your office declare Gor Mahia KPL champions?
Simple questions
The answers to these simple questions always come in a barrage of hostile statements. And his detractors love that. They use that against him and push him deeper in to the hole he has dug for himself – and keeps digging.
The other day, Mr Mwendwa ended the season and declared the Mighty Gor Mahia champions of that broke thing called KPL. Whether he was right or not is not the question, the question is, how did he do it?
It is not rocket science that application of a little common sense by both sides could have saved the day and prevented litigation and acrimonious exchanges between him and KPL mandarins, but common sense for what, for who, when, why and how – and what is common sense?
– The writer is an editor at The Standard.
