It is a good thing that AFC Leopards, or Ingwe as they prefer to be called, are scoring again. After quite acrimoniously parting ways with their prior-to-celebrated Coach Luc Aymael, the side have strung together a decent return of positive results under new Coach James Nandwa.
The problem with AFC Leopards is that they have formed a bad habit of summarily dismissing coaches whenever the team is not getting results. It could be explained like this, the team goes through a difficult period, meaning a few draws and losses. An abrupt press conference is called and before yoy say Ingokho! a coach is out of a job. Then a shortlist of high profile coaches is circulated, either none of them is ultimately hired (in which case a stand-in option is appointed ) or the least motivating of the lot is recruited and celebrated as the man to take Ingwe to greater heights.
In no time, the team is back registering wins and everyone rests happy. But in no time again, like a recurring nightmare, the bad results set in again and every body is taken back to square one. You could say it is a vicious circle, for indeed it is. We have seen the same thing happening with the likes of the late Chris Makhoha, Nick Yakhama, Twahir Muhiddin, Jan Koops, Tom Olaba (because some Portuguese guy failed to turn up), Luc Eymael. I am sure I have forgotten a few because the list should be longer than this. It is now James Nadwa's turn.
I am sure many fans share my belief in this man Nandwa. The few times he has been allowed to do his job he has done quite a commendable job. Often used as the fall back guy, he has proven more than once that he has the tools to get a job done. Like when he hastily shepherded a haphazardly assembled national under-23 side to the dreaded West African football hunting grounds, where nonetheless, he led the Kenyan lads to silence a fancied Guinean senior team, with whom Kenya drew 1-1. On the same tour, Nandwa's inexperienced charges managed to restrict Senegal to a 1-0 scoreline.
Coach Nandwa was also the man who was hastily asked to step in when Frenchman Henri Michel went AWOL on the National team. Against all odds, The stand-in coach took a nondescript Harambee Stars Team C all the way to the 2012 Tusker CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup final, before bowing out, quite gracefully, to a very determined Ugandan side.
Here is one man that the currently toothless Ingwe should hold on to and accord all the necessary support and time if they hope to regain their once feared status. Since taking over, the tactician has overseen seven consecutive wins for the club. The important thing, however, is not to fire the coach when the negative results stream in, although you can not get a guarantee on this from the trigger happy AFC Leopards management.
Speaking of trigger-happiness, it is a good thing, too, that the Ingwe side and their mashemejis, Champions-elect Gor Mahia FC, or Sirkaal, have joined hands together in a campaign aimed at promoting peaceful co-existence between their trigger-happy (again?) fans. This is a build-up promotion as we move towards the highly anticipated GOtv Shield Cup Mashemeji derby, where Gor will hope to bag their second trophy of the season, while Ingwe will do everything to deny them since they badly need a trophy themselves.
In fact, AFC Leopards should make sure the peace-promotion thing is restricted to the terraces. On the pitch, they should be as ruthlessly and as aggressively efficient as they have recently not been, considering that they have not managed to beat Gor Mahia in the recent past.
Now, one other piece of advice for Ingwe. Stop this habit of converting into a clearing house at the end of every season. What is the rationale of dispatching an entire group of footballers and recruiting an even bigger group of green-horns in its place? By all means be active in the transfer market, but in a positive way. Analyze your weak positions and strengthen in those, while doing every thing to retain your strong players.
As it has already been said all over the media, seven of the currently high riding Gor Mahia players were recruited as junior players by then Coach James Siang'a, who by the way was tolerated by management for a very long period of time, even as irate Gor Mahia fans literary bayed for his blood.
27 October 2013
Why is the Mathare United ship sinking?
If you visit the Kenya Premier League (KPL) website, you will be asked for your views regarding the teams you think will be relegated at the end of the 2013 season. One of these teams is Mathare United, the famous and once mighty Slum Boys from the fertile soccer belt of the expansive Mathare valley.
The club is lumped together in this poll of the damned with Karuturi Sports, Homeboys, Sony Sugar, Western Stima, and Muhoroni Youth. Instead of being up there, contending with Gor Mahia for the title, the team is contemplating life in the unglamorous division one league. Infact, the gap between Mathare united and the newly crowned Tusker Premier League champions is a whole 29 points, which is more than Mathare's season-long harvest of 28 points.
The club is balancing precariously on top of Sony Sugar (27 from 26 matches); Homeboyz (26 from 27); and Karuturi Sports (21 from 27). From the look of things, Karuturi's goose is as good as cooked. Who is likely to follow them through the relegation trap door? The leading contenders appear to be Homeboyz, Sony Sugar and Mathare United. And it is not the first time that Mathare United find themselves in a similar situation. It is an experience they have gone through in the recent past, only that this time, survival chances appear very minimal.
People unfamiliar with Kenyan football might be forgiven for thinking that it has always been like this for the struggling Slum Boys. But these 2013 relegation favourites actually won the 2008 Kenyan Premier League, having come close several times before their famous triumph.
Besides, the club have twice won the country's knock out tournament currently known as the GOTV Shield Cup. They were champions on first attempt in 1998, when they were not even playing in the Premier league. The Slum Boys won it again in 2000. One can therefore confidently say that the ten year period stretching between 1998 and 2008 marked Mathare United's golden football era. During this period, Mathare United played the most entertaining football in Kenya. It was a tiki-taka , self assured and devastatingly effective brand of football. The club was Kenya's Barcelona F.C. of the day.
Apart from making their presence felt in local football, the club also made several appearances on the continental scene. They played in the 2009 edition of CAF Champions League, bowing out in the preliminary round after a 5-0 thrashing by Zambia's ZESCO United. The club had experienced a slightly better outing in the 1999 CAF Cup Winners Cup tournament where they reached the second round. A 2001 participation in the same tournament ended in round one.
They also participated in the 2002 CAF Cup, bowing out in the first round of a tournament that has since been renamed the CAF Confederations Cup. Seeing that Mathare United at one point threatened to establish themselves as a dominant force in Kenyan and regional football, what suddenly went wrong? It appears that the club's management misplaced their priorities along the way.
A very effective strategy, which has worked wonders wherever it has been employed, brought a lot of success to Mathare United. I am talking about the strategy of patiently developing soccer players from their childhood and gradually growing them through the youth ranks, and then finally unleashing them on footballing opponents with devastating effect.
It is what has kept the Catalan bandwagon of Barcelona rolling on and on at the pinnacle of World club football. West African teams, too, have relied on the same strategy to churn out generation after generation of world beaters. Even Burkina Farso, who for a long time were among a very limited select league of teams that Kenya could brag of having beaten home and away, seem to have deployed the strategy to lethal effect, first coming to inches of winning the 2013 African Cup of Nations (before being out played by a resurgent Nigeria), then, actually now, standing on the threshold of gatecrashing the Brazil 2014 World cup. For what can you say of a team that in less than a month's time, takes a 3-2 advantage to an Algerian side that is no longer the dreaded force of yore.
So we are agreed that it was through maintaining a constant and quality supply of young players for their senior team that Mathare United managed to confidently strut their stuff with the big boys of Kenyan football. Then something appears to have suddenly gone wrong. First of all, how do you enter two clubs in the same premier league and call one "United" and another "Youth?" For heavens sake it is not the same as having a red-blooded Manchester United and a blue-blooded Manchester City! That is big enough a mistake to have committed to cause an outbreak of yells for some big fish's neck, but I guess the big fish at Mathare are not mere expendables.
Any way, the now big league playing Mathare Youth, but previously a very-effective-talent-churning-feeder-machine for the senior team, soon found the going tough in the premier league and finally got the relegation matching orders in 2008. The team could not survive in the lower Division One League either, and were finally disbanded on 13 August, 2012.
Unlike in the glory days when Mathare United boasted of possessing the youngest team in the Kenya Premier League, the team currently is composed of tiring veterans and old hands, many of them returnees who moved to other clubs in search of greener pastures but have gone back "home" only because no one else wants them. They include the likes of Francis Ouma, Edgar Ochieng and Simeon Mulama. Tired and rejected by their clubs, the players have found a new lease of life at their former parent club, but seemingly, the lease is not viable enough to save their club from falling off football's elite platform.
Meanwhile, the club's most talented players have recently jumped ship one after another and are now to be found at AFC Leopards SC, Gor Mahia SC, Tusker FC, Sofapaka FC and KCB FC, among others. The common thread of complaints among these "deserters" is poor or non-existent remuneration. So once again what went wrong at the thriving Mathare United? I hope this piece is not an obituary for the once glamour boys of Kenyan football-I hope they do not follow their junior side into oblivion.
23 October 2013
Why Kenya must win the 2013 CECAFA Championships
The last time Kenya won the CECAFA Championships, Dennis Oliech was yet to sit for his high school exams, Then national coach Jacob 'Ghost' Mulee was yet to discover that he had broadcasting talent as well and no Kenyan fan had heard of the name Victor Mugubi Wanyama, yet.
Ten years down the line, the national team is in a despicable run of form, managing only one win out of six in a 2014 World Cup qualification group that was won by a wobbling Nigerian team, almost beaten by Kenya in their own Kalabar stadium, and recently given a Barcelonaresque treatment by a very unlucky Ethiopian team.
The only way Kenya can regain confidence to mount a serious 2015 African Cup of Nations qualification campaign is by winning the forthcoming CECAFA Championships, luckily being hosted by Kenya. If this does not happen expect a now familiar extension of gloom in the country's football world.
I can predict with almost one hundred per cent certainty that a poor show by Harambee Stars will see Coach Adel Amrouche being shown the door because (a) fickle Kenyan fans will bay for his blood (b) Sam Nyamweya's FKF will use him as a scapegoat against public outrage.
Another likely consequence of non-performance by the national team is poor stadium attendance. The last time Kenya hosted the tournament, a very angry CECAFA Secretary General Ncholas Musonye lambasted Kenyan fans, whom he called "armchair football fans", all because of a very poor stadium attendance record by the fans. This was particularly painful because a year earlier, a very enthusiastic Tanzanian public had filled their magnificient national stadium, matdh after match.
So to save the skin of coach Amrouch, and to prevent Kenyan "armchair" fans streaming in their hundreds of thousands to pubs to watch a-once-again-scoring-arsenal or a-poor-manchester-united-wondering-how-to-get-their-ferguson-back, Harambee Stars, please do put on a decent show!
Ten years down the line, the national team is in a despicable run of form, managing only one win out of six in a 2014 World Cup qualification group that was won by a wobbling Nigerian team, almost beaten by Kenya in their own Kalabar stadium, and recently given a Barcelonaresque treatment by a very unlucky Ethiopian team.
The only way Kenya can regain confidence to mount a serious 2015 African Cup of Nations qualification campaign is by winning the forthcoming CECAFA Championships, luckily being hosted by Kenya. If this does not happen expect a now familiar extension of gloom in the country's football world.
I can predict with almost one hundred per cent certainty that a poor show by Harambee Stars will see Coach Adel Amrouche being shown the door because (a) fickle Kenyan fans will bay for his blood (b) Sam Nyamweya's FKF will use him as a scapegoat against public outrage.
Another likely consequence of non-performance by the national team is poor stadium attendance. The last time Kenya hosted the tournament, a very angry CECAFA Secretary General Ncholas Musonye lambasted Kenyan fans, whom he called "armchair football fans", all because of a very poor stadium attendance record by the fans. This was particularly painful because a year earlier, a very enthusiastic Tanzanian public had filled their magnificient national stadium, matdh after match.
So to save the skin of coach Amrouch, and to prevent Kenyan "armchair" fans streaming in their hundreds of thousands to pubs to watch a-once-again-scoring-arsenal or a-poor-manchester-united-wondering-how-to-get-their-ferguson-back, Harambee Stars, please do put on a decent show!
Gor deserved 2013 TPL title
Gor Mahia FC have finally been crown 2013 Tusker Premier League Champions, and what a way to win it - beating their only remaining challengers Sofapaka. Actually, it was only a matter of when, not if, they were going to wrap the championship up.
As I observed elsewhere, the newly crowned TPL champions, the only regional club to win a continental trophy (although that was way back in 1987), should have won the TPL three times already. In 2011 and 2012, they were the most consistent and enterprising team but nerves denied them. This time round, the recruitment of an experienced and tactically astute Coach Bobby Williamson meant they finished the season strongly.
This triumph should only be seen as only a beginning- the club should not relax yet since a bigger challenge awaits them. Never has a Kenyan club qualified for the CAF Champions League group phase. Year in - year out, the story has been of Kenyan clubs being whipping boys in continental football, especially against North African opposition. Can Gor Mahia end this trend?
If the club retains the services of Coach Williamson and strengthens their squad, they stand some chance. One area they should really work on is the strike force. It is like there is no new striker ever going to be born in Kenya again. More than ten years since the emergence of Dennis Oliech, no other striker has happened on the country's football stage with credentials that can send shivers down the spine of any defender.
If Gor Mahia cannot find such a player in Kenya, they should go shopping in West Africa. After all, Sudanese clubs El Hilal and El Merreikh recruited decent strikers from Nigeria, who helped them to enjoy some spells of continental success.
Meanwhile, the Mashemeji derby is on. Who will carry the day? bring it on!
As I observed elsewhere, the newly crowned TPL champions, the only regional club to win a continental trophy (although that was way back in 1987), should have won the TPL three times already. In 2011 and 2012, they were the most consistent and enterprising team but nerves denied them. This time round, the recruitment of an experienced and tactically astute Coach Bobby Williamson meant they finished the season strongly.
This triumph should only be seen as only a beginning- the club should not relax yet since a bigger challenge awaits them. Never has a Kenyan club qualified for the CAF Champions League group phase. Year in - year out, the story has been of Kenyan clubs being whipping boys in continental football, especially against North African opposition. Can Gor Mahia end this trend?
If the club retains the services of Coach Williamson and strengthens their squad, they stand some chance. One area they should really work on is the strike force. It is like there is no new striker ever going to be born in Kenya again. More than ten years since the emergence of Dennis Oliech, no other striker has happened on the country's football stage with credentials that can send shivers down the spine of any defender.
If Gor Mahia cannot find such a player in Kenya, they should go shopping in West Africa. After all, Sudanese clubs El Hilal and El Merreikh recruited decent strikers from Nigeria, who helped them to enjoy some spells of continental success.
Meanwhile, the Mashemeji derby is on. Who will carry the day? bring it on!
18 October 2013
Gor Mahia have title wrapped up and in the trophy cabinet
For those still doing the math, calculating their chances of snatching the 2013 Tusker Premier League title from 'Sirkaal', am sorry to disappoint you-no chance! It won't happen. It has happened before in the last few seasons, most famously last year when Tusker won it with the last kick of the ball, literary, but no chance this year.
So what makes me so bullish about the 'Mighty K'ogalo's' prospects this year? Some analysts have claimed that Gor's playing unit is better this year. But I say, Gor Mahia have been strong the past few years- in fact, they should have won the league three or four times already, but they have gotten in the habit of spectacularly collapsing in the final stages of the season, all because of nerves, really. This time it has been totally different, and the club's fanatical followers, best known as 'the green army', must surely be preparing a feast - woe unto the fish!.
But to me, it is not the players- they had been performing well already, as I have intimated above. It is the coach. The moment I heard that the club had engaged former Uganda Cranes coach Robert Bobby Williamson, I knew something special was going to happen. The problem with Gor Mahia has been the lack of a coach with a winning mentality.
For all his eccentricity, in the mould of sacked Sunderland manager Paulo Di Canio, Croat Zdravco Logarusic could not help Gor's players hold their nerves together when it mattered most. But it has been different with Williamson whose calming approach has helped them remain focused even when things got somewhat uncomfortable.
The 52 years old Scot came to Gor with quite an impressive resume. Amongst the teams he has managed is Kilmarnock FC, the 2012 Scottish Communities League Cup Winners. He led the club to the 96-97 Scottish cup in his first season as Manager, beating Falkirk 1-0. He aslo led the club to European football.
In 2002 he took charge of Hibernian FC, who had gone 18 matches without a win, and won the first match, which kept the club safe from relegation. the club was forced to sell many senior players due to financial problems but he still led a team comprising of mostly young players to the 2004 Scottish League Cup final. He also won the Scottish Manager of the Month twice.
On appointment by Uganda, Mr Williamson was given an ultimatum to win the first two matches - and he did - against Niger and Benin. This started a steady climb on FIFA rankings for Uganda Cranes, and by the time he left the team, he had bagged four CECAFA titles - 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012 - and Kenya had not managed to beat Uganda.
This is obviously a coach who has something to show in the form of trophies and results, something that not many coaches working in the country can brag about. If Gor Mahia manage to hold on to him, I can predict that the club shall win a regional, and even continental title soon. And - did FKF err in overlooking the Scotsman in favour of Adel Amrouche as Harambee Stars Coach? Time will tell.
So what makes me so bullish about the 'Mighty K'ogalo's' prospects this year? Some analysts have claimed that Gor's playing unit is better this year. But I say, Gor Mahia have been strong the past few years- in fact, they should have won the league three or four times already, but they have gotten in the habit of spectacularly collapsing in the final stages of the season, all because of nerves, really. This time it has been totally different, and the club's fanatical followers, best known as 'the green army', must surely be preparing a feast - woe unto the fish!.
But to me, it is not the players- they had been performing well already, as I have intimated above. It is the coach. The moment I heard that the club had engaged former Uganda Cranes coach Robert Bobby Williamson, I knew something special was going to happen. The problem with Gor Mahia has been the lack of a coach with a winning mentality.
For all his eccentricity, in the mould of sacked Sunderland manager Paulo Di Canio, Croat Zdravco Logarusic could not help Gor's players hold their nerves together when it mattered most. But it has been different with Williamson whose calming approach has helped them remain focused even when things got somewhat uncomfortable.
The 52 years old Scot came to Gor with quite an impressive resume. Amongst the teams he has managed is Kilmarnock FC, the 2012 Scottish Communities League Cup Winners. He led the club to the 96-97 Scottish cup in his first season as Manager, beating Falkirk 1-0. He aslo led the club to European football.
In 2002 he took charge of Hibernian FC, who had gone 18 matches without a win, and won the first match, which kept the club safe from relegation. the club was forced to sell many senior players due to financial problems but he still led a team comprising of mostly young players to the 2004 Scottish League Cup final. He also won the Scottish Manager of the Month twice.
On appointment by Uganda, Mr Williamson was given an ultimatum to win the first two matches - and he did - against Niger and Benin. This started a steady climb on FIFA rankings for Uganda Cranes, and by the time he left the team, he had bagged four CECAFA titles - 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012 - and Kenya had not managed to beat Uganda.
This is obviously a coach who has something to show in the form of trophies and results, something that not many coaches working in the country can brag about. If Gor Mahia manage to hold on to him, I can predict that the club shall win a regional, and even continental title soon. And - did FKF err in overlooking the Scotsman in favour of Adel Amrouche as Harambee Stars Coach? Time will tell.
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