Sometime in 2012, a small club from the French Pyrenees made worldwide headlines for having scaled their way up from the National League to Ligue 2 of French football.
It was hailed as a fairytale campaign considering that the team, Luzenac, came from a small village with a total population of some 650 people; their stadium had a stand that could hold only 400 people and the budget was footed by some local rich man who made the former Manchester United goalkeeper Fabien Barthez its honorary president.
It was good work and the dedication of the team was paramount; the players were really inspired to make it happen and everything seemed to work well for the team.
They finished second in the National Ligue and were to be promoted to the top tier just one rung under Ligue1! This was not to be.
The French FA vetoed their rise due to the fact that their stadium was too small to hold Ligue 2 matches and their source of funding did not seem solid to the FA.
A Luzenac player Nicholas Dieuze summed up his view of it with a perfect lament: “Who would have thought that five months after our promotion to Ligue 2, we’d be saying goodbye to each other in a car park?”
That is what exactly happened. The team was dragged back to the seventh division and had to release all their players from their contractual obligations so that they could get other clubs interested in their services.
This is a story that really hurt the feelings of many people and a good number of them called the French FA imbeciles. Nobody likes dreams being shattered but on this, the FA was only sticking to the rules and the laws that govern the game in France.
Putting a team in the higher echelons of the league yet you are not sure if it can sustain itself there is like killing the league.
We do have such teams in the Football Kenya Federation Premier League and they are because we have not tightened our rules. We pretend to be professionals while at the same time we take many amateurish strides.
Last week, Gor Mahia are reported to have cleared the debts they owed and as a result, Fifa lifted the ban against the big club allowing them to transfer players and to acquire new signings.
It may be a relief to K’Ogalo fans but it is a shameful thing for the local giants. They just couldn’t pay until they were pulled by the collar by Fifa! We must have stiff rules from the FA before they reach the level of Fifa.
In a capitalist model, money becomes the goal of everything and with Vihiga Bullets and other teams’ problems in mind, we must ensure that teams are vetted before they are allowed to join a higher tier. It is painful but it must be done.
