Time for Kenya to learn and prepare

Football Kenya Federation chairman Sam Nyamweya will feel vindicated by the turn of events in the last week.

Then, the FKF boss sent the national Under-23 team into the deep end for practice matches against Africa Cup of Nations-bound Senegal and Guinea in West Africa.

Cynics saw lambs going to the slaughterhouse.

But out of the lion’s den with a slim 1-0 loss to Senegal’s Lions of Teranga at Leopold Sedar Senghor Stadium and an impressive 1-1 draw against Conakry two days later, Nyamweya can now dare to dream.

Incessant wrangling

Since 2004 when we sunbathed on the exquisite Mediterranean beaches in Bizerte, Tunisia, celebrating Kenya’s rare Nations Cup victory at the Stade 15 Octobre, we have never been to these finals again.

Three-nil it was, with goals from Emmanuel Ake, Dennis Oliech and John Baraza putting down the Stallions of Burkina Faso.

It was a nice way to crown a tournament that saw the Harambee Stars hammered 3-1 by Frederic Kanoute’s Mali before falling 3-0 to El Hadji Diouf’s Senegal, Papa Boupa Diop and Mamadou Niang (two) the destroyers-in-chief.

Since then, incessant wrangling at Kenya’s football management saw our game sink to an all-time low, and it came as a huge relief to many when, finally, successful elections were held last October ushering in a single body, the Nyamweya-led FKF.

It is always sad to be glued to the television set watching West Africa battle the South and the North, with scant representation from East and Central Africa.

It will be interesting to see how Sudan – with its entirely home-based squad – perform at these finals where they are drawn in Group B against red-hot favourites Cote d’Ivoire and Angola’s Palancas Negras.

That should give us a fair indication of our region’s standing against the rest of Africa.

Stars from provincial league

It will be prudent for Nyamweya’s team to maintain the same Under-23 squad – whose goalkeeper Joel Bataro, for instance, was drawn from the most nondescript of teams, Mombasa-based Admiral – as a basis on which to build our national team for next year’s African finals in South Africa and the 2014 World Cup Finals in Brazil.

Who said only players in the Kenyan Premier League are Kenya’s best and are the only ones licensed to wear the Stars strip?

The late Reinhardt Fabisch proved there is more to Kenyan football than the premiership when he detoured to the South Coast and fished out a galaxy of stars from provincial league sides – such as Mombasa’s Two Fishes FC and Malindi’s Alaskan – who went on to become central figures in Harambee Stars.

Players like Mohammed Sherif, Robert Mambo, Godfrey Osama, goalkeeper Abdallah Ashur “Ndizi” and Mohammed Ali “Baresi” come to mind.

Well, enough said.