Why Fifa is dead set against any local officials running soccer

What you need to know:

  • Soccer is like all the other “globalised” commodities. It gradually became the extraordinarily lucrative private property of a closely knit cabal of Europeans.
  • It is not to celebrate Europe that we send these special products of our women’s wombs to Europe. No, our aim is to nurture their inborn talents so that they can make some money to plough back into nurturing Kenya’s next generation of players.
  • It is not with Sepp Blatter’s pockets in mind that Kenya’s women struggle so hard to nurture soccer-playing shapes such as Europe-based maestros Victor Wanyama and Divock Origi.
  • If Kenya had had forward-looking soccer managers, Ahmed Breikh, Joe Kadenge, Charles Mukora, William Chege Ouma, Stephen Yongo and others would long ago have entered the international record books alongside the likes of Beckham, Best, Cantona, Eusebio, Jairzinho, Messi, Pele, Pushkas and Ronaldo.

In a world of hideously lopsided “globalisation” – where global corruption is networked precisely through Western cartels – how can anybody wonder that Africa’s national soccer federations – Kenya’s included – are among the pillars of Joseph Blatter’s rotten longevity at Fifa’s helm?

The way world football is organised is completely in line with the structure of the general international division of labour. Both the Third World and the Western mass produce all the raw materials – the talents of youth – which enter the maws of the Western soccer industry to produce Lausanne’s Witwatersrand.

What is increasingly apparent is that, for that very reason – namely, to avoid any nationally initiated official inspection of Fifa’s books – Fifa has worked so hard, especially during Herr Blatter’s regime, to bar all national governments from involvement in the running of all activities of association football even at home.

LUCRATIVE PRIVATE PROPERTY

Soccer is like all the other “globalised” commodities. It gradually became the extraordinarily lucrative private property of a closely knit cabal of Europeans, where the world’s raw materials – namely, the world’s youth talents – enter the maws of Western industry to enrich club owners at the immense expense of the Third World’s own mothers and fathers.

Every national federation – especially African – is manned by individuals completely beholden to the little Swiss city of Lausanne. But how can it be otherwise when Fifa’s headquarters presumes to place itself at the centre of activities of every national organisation – openly investing money to ensure that only Fifa’s local minions are elected?

In this way, Fifa presumes to be above every nation’s elected government. But, surely, every nation has a collective interest in its boys and girls excelling in every international competition.

If our own government cannot intervene – both financially and in organisational terms – in putting Kenya on the world map of sports, why does official Kenya have a ministry of Sports?

Nevertheless, the comity of nations which the United Nations purports to promote asserts that it recognises the right of every member-state to exploit all its own resources, natural as well as human, and to sell the products of such exploitation essentially for its own enrichment in all other development areas.

It is not with Sepp Blatter’s pockets in mind that Kenya’s women struggle so hard to nurture soccer-playing shapes such as Europe-based maestros Victor Wanyama and Divock Origi.

NURTURE THEIR TALENT

It is not to celebrate Europe that we send these special products of our women’s wombs to Europe. No, our aim is to nurture their inborn talents so that they can make some money to plough back into nurturing Kenya’s next generation of players.

However, it is precisely because Africa’s own soccer organisations – exemplified by Kenya’s – have ignominiously failed to nurture such talents locally by organising the game in a creative, straightforward and corruption-free manner that Africa continues to lose all its raw talents into enriching Western Europe and North America even in terms of sports.

If Kenya had had forward-looking soccer managers, Ahmed Breikh, Joe Kadenge, Charles Mukora, William Chege Ouma, Stephen Yongo and others would long ago have entered the international record books alongside the likes of Beckham, Best, Cantona, Eusebio, Jairzinho, Messi, Pele, Pushkas and Ronaldo.

Why have we failed? Partly because of absence of ideas and foresight, but mostly because most of us – both nationally and at the club level – seek to enter soccer leadership, not because of what we can contribute to the youth but only because of what soccer can do to swell our own personal pockets and bank accounts.

Yet whenever a European liberal politician goes on about world corruption, a Martian listener would think that corruption is genetic in the black African.

It wouldn’t possibly occur to the Martian to link Africa’s ruling-class corruption to any Caucasian Euro-American Anglo-Leasing. That is why Fifa is so dead set against any local official involvement in running soccer.