RADICAL CHANGES SAVOUR OF OUR FOOTBALL, NOT PRAYERS

If it's not limping, it's ailing. If it isn't ailing, then it is paddling in a pool of embarrassment. This is the narrative that has been a recurring feature in Kenyan football for as long as there was football and memory, and the recent embarrassing scenario that marred Harambee Stars' journey to Cape Verde should perhaps be the crown on our ever growing pile of humiliation. The story has been the same for years-different casts but the same script and this low has exposed the real issues if at all we had missed them in the past.

1. Poor leadership

This is perhaps the highlight of everything wrong with our football. From vacous and silly supremacy battles to lack of proper structures, no low is too low for this current administration to stoop,even as far as threatening players is concerned, what with allegations that a top official from Football Kenya Federation (FKF) allegedly threatened to ruin a player's career for protesting the treatment of the team in the saga before the Cape Verde trip (The player in question is the chair of a union for players).
While I wouldn't want to pour water over the current administration's efforts, it is clear even to a layman that aside from quickfire, short term achievements, nothing stands tall as a resilient legacy on which we can dock our dreams and hopes. FKF treads on soft grounds and it is this negligence that has left our football sitting upon its anus in ignominy. Take this: since 2007, when the new administration was first voted in, the coach's hotseat has seen eleven different people rub their butts upon its scorching cushion, with Jacob 'Ghost' Mulee and Francis Kimanzi recurring on it like a comedic setpiece. Yet the wave of whatever change each coach has promised has remained elusive and pipe. Can we blame the coaches? Certainly they are culpable but it is the administration responsible for hiring them that should see the pointed fingers first. For a regime that barely has a tangible development plan, the sacking and hiring and re-hiring of coaches is meant to be a front that hides the fact that we could replace our football administration with lamp posts and still see no difference.(The highlight of this was when they forced the visionary Bernard Lama to resign after just two months incharge of the national outfit).

A rewind back to the turbulent year of 2004, a year that saw Kenya banned from international football activities by FIFA, bespeaks of the malignancy of ineffectual leadership we are susceptible to entertaining. Bear in mind that despite the administration being different then, several faces have remained gritty in the face of it all, a constant in the prevailing variable. The two top-tier league format witnessed that year and the season of 2015 is evidence enough that we have a leadership that changes personality but not character. It is no rocket science. To improve our football, a total overhaul of the same system of governance and the same faces should hallmark our desire for change.

2. Poor coaches and poorer hiring methods

A few years back, a distinguished gentleman by the name Antoine Hey came, saw and made hay before we could all say hey! If anything corroborated the lethargic and almost disdainful arrogance in our football governance, it had to be this man. He who walked out of the Harambee Stars right before a crucial World Cup qualifier against Nigeria in 2009. How he was hired remains a mystery considering his resume offers no substantial content barring tinny factfiles: it looks like a badly done term paper from a particularly incompetent student. This properly put to perspective our flawed coach hiring system. Simply put- we are not getting good results because we are not hiring good enough coaches and even when the coach is good enough, there is always a danger of an administration that looms a shadow over the coach. Yet we seem to always prefer foreign coaches whose reputation is alien even to a know-it-all like wikipedia. We simply can't crack excellence with such. We seem to expect maximum results from average to mediocre coaches. The cloak will never fit if we keep cutting it smaller.

3. Taking joy from mediocrity

This is perhaps a culmination of our hopelessness born from being let down daily by an administration that looks like they would rather be elsewhere. Yet it should rage us to see our football go to shreds as it is.
On October 8th 2011, Kenya held Uganda to a barren draw in Namboole stadium in an African Cup of Nations (ACN) qualifier.it was the final game of the group. What followed was wild celebrations from our end of things as if we had tasted a slice of victory. The merriment was anchored to the fact that the draw had seen Uganda, whom at that point were the leaders of the group and one victory away from the ACN, fail to proceed. It didn't serve us good but seeing Uganda out in the cold with us was a reason to celebrate. This kind of attitude summed up our lack of belief that we can do just as well if not better. And such a trait seems to have taken an impertinent root in us. Each time we pull off a draw, we wax poetic lyrics on our team in manners likely to make Shakespeare's sonnets look tame. And this has spread onto our clubs too where we call for them to fight for a draw on foreign soil, forgetting a win is a thing. Drowning in small victories will only leave us in a mark time. To qualify for atleast an African Cup, consistency is key and we will never rise to the 'consistently good' class if we celebrate draws and one off victories as collosal triumphs.

The 2-0 win over Uganda in the Cecafa 2015 on November 22nd not withstanding, Uganda is still the best team in East and Central Africa, no matter their performance in this year's Cecafa. The fact that they are the only team from Eastern Africa in the last group stage qualifiers for the African Cup lends credibility to this claim and this condemns us to the tears we were to shed in 2011. This time we are alone in the cold with Uganda a few light years ahead.

With a management that has ridiculously high targets for a new coach over a ridiculously short period of time without any tangible plan, the African Cup might remain a mirage and yet it is only after a remarkable showing in the continental stage can we dream of the Holy Grail that is The World Cup.
We need a paradigm change for our football to show any signs of progress. Our best performances never clear the ever nagging question- will we play this well next time? There is something missing and that something can only be found in a complete change of guard. Our dead faith and prayers will only lead us where dead faith leads people- nowhere.

December 14th should see a new dawn in our football. Acting on that faith and voting for change is the only way we can make the blurry dream of the African Cup of Nations and the World Cup clearer. Or else we keep chasing the wind with hopes of drawing milk.

Photo: goal.com