Started 16 years ago, the Corporate Football League, organised by Left Foot Sports Limited, has announced ambitious plans to develop beyond Nairobi and Mombasa into Kisumu.
The amateur football league, who matches are played on Sundays, currently boasts 95 teams and over 3,500 players, most of whom are aligned to various corporates.
The 2020 season kicks off next Sunday, March 15, in Nairobi, hot on the heels of last month’s gala where top achievers in the 2019 season were rewarded.
Teams playing in the league part with an average Sh100,000 as registration fees to participate in the competition for a season. The teams have, until last year, been playing matches in Nairobi and Mombasa.
“The move to Kisumu marks the next phase of our expansion programme and we are very excited about it,” explains Amit Bhasin, Left Foot Sports’ co-founder and brainchild.
Toyota Kenya, Nation Media Group and Trade Mills are among the teams that have confirmed participation in the new Kisumu League which will kick off in September.
“Kisumu is the ‘birthplace’ of Kenyan football and we are aiming to bring the passion of a multi-cultured league where fans and former footballers will have a chance to kick a football and enjoy over the weekend, and without necessary participating in rigorous training.
“In my opinion, there is no better way to spend your Thursday, Saturday or Sunday afternoon,” says Amit. It has been an eventful journey for Left Foot Sports since the competition’s inception in an eight-team league way back in 2006.
“We just started the competition so as to have fun, and it has been full of challenging fun,” recalls Amit.
Amit also concedes that last year was the most challenging for this project. “The economic situation was not conducive and, as a result, most corporates cut their budgets.
“It affected our programme but, in the end, we had to do with the resources available.”
The Left Foot Sports League consists of a multi-cultural leagues with each team fielding at most eight players in a match. Some of the players use this as a launching pad in the careers with three of them having been poached by the Nairobi County League with Isaac Ogutu, who joined Kenyan Premier League side Bandari FC in 2016, the prominent success story.
The remaining players in the five-tier league are those who wish to play for fun, including retired professional footballers.
Some of the seasoned sides in the various leagues include Kingsway Group, MP Shah Hospital, Eco Bank FC, SportPesa, Royal Media Group, NIC Bank, and — wait for this — Vitambi Viishe FC!
“We have no sponsors as yet but there is a lot of room for growth. England has more than 150 amateur leagues and that motivates us to plan on ultimately moving to Nanyuki, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda in the coming years.”
Some of the most historic encounters witnessed in this league were when Safaricom faced off with Airtel in a corporate encounter or the clash between Total Kenya and Kenya Airways which translates to a fuel supplier facing off with a client.
A main challenge facing the growth of this sport is the unavailability of pitches and relatively high rates of leasing the same.
Amit is the Left Foot Sports organisation’s main partner, with the co-founder being his brother Aman.
“My brother and I used to go to Murang’a where our dad was working as a doctor for many years, and during holidays we had opportunity to play football there and continued on Sundays when we moved to Nairobi about 10 years ago.
So we came up with an idea of starting up a league because we had been playing same teams every six months, we came up with a small prize money and found a bigger ground at Nairobi School and the rest is history,” says Aman in an earlier interview.
NETWORKING GREATEST SUCCESS
Aman explains that networking has been the greatest success of the competition thus far.
“Everyone thinks golf is the way to network. But can you try and imagine we have 90 corporates teams and bring together about 800 people consisting chief executive officers and chief operation officers, to cooks, drivers and even messengers all playing on one pitch? Where else can you find that?”
In the just concluded league season, Cosmos Limited were crowned overall champions in the top division, while Ping Limited, Trade Winds, Letshego Kenya and Sikh Rangers finished top in the second, third, fourth and fifth divisions, respectively.
With divisions one to three matches kicking off next weekend (March 15) Aman says teams wishing to join Division Five are still welcome.
“We have just signed up with Simba Colt and other teams wishing to join Division Five are most welcome as the games in that division start in May,” Aman says. “Entries for Division Five are still open until May.
Nation Media Group’s Nation FC — playing with backing from shirt sponsors StarTimes — joined the league in Division Five in 2018 and finished third to gain promotion to Division Four last season.
Again, Nation FC bagged a third place last season that saw them promoted to Division Three this season, targeting another top three finish to climb higher.
