Change the hiring of AFC squad

I must take this opportunity to congratulate, belated though, Tusker FC for wining this year’s Kenyan Premier League.

It does not matter that Ingwe dominated proceedings and thoroughly outplayed Tusker for the better part of the last game, only to be undone by a Shafique Batambuze’s opportunistic goal with 20 minutes to go.

What matters is that Tusker’s resilience and consistency makes them deserving winners.

I’m made to understand that our noisy neighbours are blaming Ingwe for handing the trophy to Tusker on a silver platter. What I know is that winning the league was not dependent on that one game. K’Ogalo, and even Ingwe, had equal opportunities to win the title.

In any case, it is not Ingwe’s business to help other teams win the league, least of them K’Ogalo. Sorry. Just like Ingwe, hooliganism and player indiscipline on the pitch resulting in docked points derailed our separate campaigns this season.

Back to Ingwe and our problems. An observation by newly hired coach Stewart Hall has left me casting serious doubts about our player recruitment policy, if it exists at all.

How is it that the three coaches who have handled Ingwe this season – Jan Koops, Ivan Minnaert and Ezekiel Akwana – never realised that we had at most, only three left footed players in the squad?

IMBALANCED SQUAD

Come to think of it, the only natural left-footed players in the current squad are Yusuf Juma, who is currently on suspension and playmaker Allan Kateregga, at least as far as I know. There could be others, I don’t know.

That being the case, it does not require rocket science to understand why Ingwe struggled for the better part of the season. World over, no team achieves success with such an imbalanced squad.

As if that is not bad enough, why the coaches we had sacrificed Juma, a natural left back for Mwanzo Cresten, a right footed player!

Yet, it may be premature to point fingers at the three coaches who preceded Hall for this rather embarrassing situation we find ourselves in. Year in, year out, player recruitment at Ingwe has largely been the preserve of members of the executive committee as it guarantees them quick and easy bucks.

Haven’t we heard narratives that the club forked out hundreds of thousands of shillings to acquire the services of a player, only for it to emerge that the player in question came on a free transfer? Examples abound.

That is why I’m inclined to believe that the imbalance in the squad is the direct consequence of characters with no knowledge of the game arrogating themselves the role of recruiting players.

To move forward, we must leave matters of player recruitment to Hall and his team, not busybodies purporting to understand the quality of players the team needs.