Kenya’s history of preparing for tourneys shows we never learn

In a recent article in this newspaper, Cecafa secretary general Nicholas Musonye dismissed Kenya’s valiant effort in their Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers that just ended short of qualifying after Uganda held them to a barren draw in Kampala.

Musonye was so irked by the spirited last-minute effort by almost the entire country to help Harambee Stars win, with officials, politicians and ordinary Kenyans enthusiastically rallying behind their favourite team.

The unimpressed Cecafa chief termed the effort “empty euphoria” and wondered why such effort had not been mustered for the first game of the qualifiers and, indeed, every other match. (READ: Kampala frenzy exposes flaws in Kenyan game)

The truth does hurt. Apart from knowing nods from the coaches and playing unit, Football Kenya Limited officials in charge of Stars, rather sensitive to criticism, kept mum over Musonye’s sentiments.

Musonye concluded by challenging Kenya to begin the 2014 World Cup qualifiers with the same fervour it ended the 2012 Nations Cup qualifiers.

But he could as well have been talking to a wall: we are in a similar situation ahead of the 2012 qualifiers in September last year when the team had no money, no contracted coach, no purpose, no plan, no dream.

Kenya play Seychelles in less than a month as they begin a potentially three-year-long qualification battle.

FKL have mutedly talked about a Sh250 million campaign but no one has come running to chip in. Harambee Stars have no permanent coach.

Gor Mahia coach Zedekiah Otieno is handling the supposedly World Cup-bound Harambee Stars on, imagine, a part-time basis.

Meanwhile, you may wonder if the Harambee Stars Management Board, constituted by the government to handle the affairs of the team, are in charge.

A case in point was this year when they were busy arranging for Stars to play a friendly international against Zambia only for FKL to hastily fly the team to Rustenburg to play South Africa.

Or when FKL suddenly announced some LG-sponsored fixture with Sudan that the board was not privy to.

The rocky working relationship between FKL and KPL that has, like a destructive marriage, been sustained for so long to the mutual loss of either party, continues unabated.

I have not heard about a working plan between FKL, KPL, Stars board, government and coaches on Brazil 2014. One would think Kenya has no international engagements.

To borrow Friedrich Hegel’s quote, “We learn from history that we never learn anything from history”, Harambee Stars are about to begin another qualifier but everybody is waiting to see what happens.