How Kenya missed step to attaining football glory

PHOTO | FILE Douglas Mutua (centre) and his Harambee Stars team mates, including John Okello “Zangi” (left) and Mickey Weche (right) aboard a plane on their way to Algeria for a match. The retired football player bemoans the poor state of the sport in Kenya.

What you need to know:

  • In this country even good things can turn out bad. What is perceived as talent easily metamorphoses into a curse

“Well, the tune has been played and all the rats danced out of our country into the sea. Now who pays the piper?”

That’s the question Douglas Mutua, a former Harambee Stars ace, posed recently.

We were seeking answers and a possible way forward to the suffering of retired sportsmen and women in Kenya, which was once again thrust onto the public conscience by the travails and subsequent depression of retired boxer Congestina Achieng’.

In this country even good things can turn out bad. What is perceived as talent easily metamorphoses into a curse.

“They love you very much, you are praised to the heavens, and all jostle for your attention when you are playing the game. As soon as you are of no more use to them, they dump you like something vile! It’s our system, and the faster a player digests this sad fact the better it shall be for his future life,” said Mutua.

Thus opines the soft-spoken father of two without a hint of regret, as if the fact holds no bitterness, as if it is an immutable visage of our national psyche.

“In the seventies and eighties when Kenyan football drew thousands of fans into the national stadia, the footballers never earned much financially. The best one could get was a job in some parastatal. They did not employ you as a footballer. You got a job requisite to your educational level and training,” Mutua reminisces.

“In this way you had footballers employed as engineers and others as office messengers. Your pay came from the company that employed you.”

This explains the disparity in quality of life of the players and the frustrations that bedevilled many whose sole ability lay in the field of play.

“Many people blame the parents of those decades for stopping many talented boys from playing football and concentrating all their efforts into academic qualifications. Those parents were right, they were very practical and they may have saved their children from liquid fame and solid suffering.

“I read in the Nation newspaper of the death of many of my contemporaries. It made very depressing reading….” Mutua continues while fiddling with magnetic coaching boards, switching one player from one part to the other.

Kept community clubs afloat

“What if I had depended on my footballing career totally?”

That’s a thought that seems to disturb him momentarily but he shakes it off with a weak smile and continues:

“The community clubs like Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards had players sign but these players were employees mainly of communication and transport corporations like Railways, Post Office, Kenya Airways and the like.

“To say the truth, it was these corporations that made it possible for the community clubs to be able to stay afloat.

“In Mombasa there were outfits like Wanderers, Nyundo and Feisal, who made it to the top echelons courtesy of benefactors willing to foot the bill. These community clubs were the mainstay of the league. Many fans identified with them and were proud of their local lads doing well.”

This can be discerned from the atmosphere of celebration that engulfed Mombasa when Nyundo won the Super League towards the end of the seventies!

“The fanbase these teams enjoyed was never turned to any financial value to support the teams. Nobody thought of even selling club jerseys to the supporters – the teams themselves had a scarcity of jerseys and the same outfit was washed and rewashed till the numbers disappeared. By the way, have you ever seen Kenyan players exchange shirts after a match?”

Mutua laughs knowingly and I outdo him in this last act.

“I remember a player who bore the number 10 jersey but the digit ‘1’ was illegible from much washing. He was thus number zero, a feat only possible in that age! He was a good player too in spite of the sad detail.

“There were teams who, when their player was substituted for another, the one coming in had to wear the sweaty shirt of the one going out. This system was notorious, especially in the lower leagues with the poorest of clubs.

“There were no royalties from television or radio coverage we had only VoK. The radio was the main vehicle to transmit the matches live to Kenyans in far-flung places away from the matches.

“Radio commentators became the celebrities of the age and names of Mohammed Juma Njuguna, Leonard Mambo Mbotela, Salim Manga and others are tattooed in indelible ink in the memories of those who lived the times.

“On the other hand, there were the teams belonging to companies. These employed footballers on condition that they would join their club. This group included teams like Kenya Breweries (renamed Tusker), Rivatex, Nzoia, Kenya Cooperative Creameries (KCC), and we can also add teams sponsored by the ministries – like Ministry of Works (MoW).

“Those who turned out for these outfits were employees and earned salaries from their employers. They were not employed as footballers though; they were only employed because they were footballers!

“Professionalism was unheard of. There was Scarlet, of Nakuru, made up of soldiers. They played for the Army.

“These company teams lacked the fanatic fanbase commanded by the community clubs. Who would identify with Breweries, for example? Even a cane cutter in Nzoia cannot be expected to be delirious over the team’s win! They had to make do with empty pitches when they play.”

Played to a ghost audience

Mutua recalls sardonically: “When I turned out for Kenatco and later Breweries, the stadium only filled up when we were playing against Gor or AFC. And all the fans were rooting for those clubs. When we met MoW we practically played to a ghost audience.

“Sadly, this fact has been perpetuated to date and you see it when, say, Tusker play Sofapaka. Although it is a highly billed encounter, the stands remain empty and gate collections are paltry.

“SuperSport has brought in money bringing the games live on TV but you still realise that televising a match with empty stands makes a mockery of the venture. A team with no fanbase is an outfit at best dead or in a coma.”

On the national team side, things weren’t any different, Mutua recalls: “If one had the honour to be called for national duty, the football association would pay his allowances.”

The allowances for the national team were nothing to write home about. Inflation notwithstanding, the players got Sh150 per day. Raw patriotism … not a coin was allowed to jingle in it!

“A good footballer can only last for a decade. From his early twenties to early thirties when he begins to wane. Now, from the earnings while he played, he should have saved for his early retirement. What were we supposed to have saved from our days on the pitch?”

Fallen into dire straits

He pauses. The picture begins to become clear as to why many sports people in Kenya have fallen into dire straits: “In the early nineties with the economy grounding to a halt, state corporations were feeling the heat.

“They took to retrenching workers to lower their wage bills and many footballers were axed from their employments. Who was going to play a Posta worker who was playing for AFC Leopards? What value was he adding to the parastatal?

“This move greatly affected the community clubs and club football in Kenya was all but dead in that decade. The clubs became the haunt of politicians and politician wannabes whose agenda was not football at all. They were looking for a ladder to Parliament and lucre and the ailing clubs gave them the leverage to their personal aims.

“With the opening of the airwaves and entry of Pay TV, the English Premier League drew all the remaining fans from local football and the only team that Kenyans remained supporting was the national team.

“From which pool was the national team going to draw its players? It had to be fished from the murky waters of the local league. From nothing, nothing comes. You can change coaches as much as you like but the result will remain the same in the absence of grassroot structures.”