Moment of truth as Harambee Stars face off with Desert Foxes

Kenya and Algeria start their 2019 Africa Cup of Nations campaign at Cairo’s 30 June Stadium tonight with two different objectives. Algeria, in times past one of Africa’s finest teams and the 1990 champion, will be seeking reclaim their place in the sun with another win. Harambee Stars will be happy with a place in the second round.

The team that Victor Wanyama leads out may have enjoyed the smoothest and best funded run-up to the competition of any that has gone there before.

Overall, it is the best the country has put together in a long time. And in Sebastien Migne, it is also expertly coached, never mind those questionable calls where leading scorers were left out and goalkeepers with glaring blind sides given a call up. This team has good and experienced ball handlers, like Wanyama, Ayub Timbe, Michael Olunga, Eric Johanna and Francis Kahata.

If we can read anything from the friendlies it has played in the countdown to the competition against Madagascar and DR Congo, it is that it can hold out but has difficulty scoring. And if this proves to be its undoing, Migne will have nowhere to run. He will have brought the misery upon himself. This will also be the case if the goal line leaks without a good reason.

WANGA DEBACLE

The team has doubtful depth. The bench does not pack a punch. If the job is not done by the starting eleven, we have no magician waiting to come on to save our blushes. We have very little evidence of that this far. The big stage of the Nations Cup is the perfect parade ground for scouts looking for new players but I still don’t understand why the form and experience of a goal scorer such as Allan Wanga wasn’t needed by Migne.

Anyway, the overriding - and unstated - objective of participating in the tournament, as with anything else in our football, is not to do well or to develop it. It is to showcase young players for sale to Europeans.

It is in the nature of Africans to sell their own to foreigners, whether to European and Arab slave drivers in ages past or as labourers and sportspeople today.

The economic opportunities in the continent are ever dwindling against ballooning populations and the only hope is to look up to the former colonial masters for a way out.

I still don’t know what to expect of Harambee Stars’ style of play in Egypt. I know Algeria will display intricate possession football. The hallmark of this is individual skill. They will be patient in their build-ups and very good at capitalising on mistakes. This has been how they have played in good times and bad.

Whether defeating West Germany 2-1 in the 1982 World Cup or losing to nondescripts such the Central African Republic, whether playing with legendary giants such as Lakhdar Belloumi and Rabah Madjer or fielding unknown youngsters, you can easily identify the Desert Foxes not just because of their green and white kit, but by their style. Algeria, though winning the Nations Cup only once, has been in the league of Africa’s best sides.

CHANGING STYLE

But Harambee Stars? Their style changes with every coming coach - literary. This disease was identified as far back as 1971 by Dettmar Cramer, the Fifa coach who believed that our country had what it takes to play at the summit of African football and win.

“Of the 15 African countries I have coached, Kenya has the best potential,” he declared at the end of his coaching tour.

“It may not be the leading African nation now but the talent is there and it has to be exploited. This is no lie. I am not a diplomat and I do not go around African countries praising them just to maintain good relations between them and Fifa. I mean what I say.”

As a prelude to giving the country a playing identity, Cramer formed the Kenya Football Coaches Association whose objective was to give structure to the technical side of the game and make it possible for services to reach the grass roots in a systematic, accountable and sustainable way.

Cramer urged the coaches, led by the country’s first Afcon captain, John Nyawanga, to develop a unique playing style for Kenya. He pointed out that Morocco, the then top African nation who had made a good run in the 1970 World Cup had their own playing style.

He asked Kenyans to stop their obsession with imitating European or Latin American styles of play. Forty five years later in 2017, Sunday Oliseh, former captain of Nigeria’s Super Eagles and then a brand ambassador for the Bundesliga, said the same thing in almost the same words.

The former Borussia Dortmund, FC Cologne and VFL Bochum midfielder told his listeners in Nairobi: “The technical team and administrators need to sit down and decide how the national team will play. From what I have seen, there is no identity. Is it possession football, direct, or a mixture of both?”

One question that has engaged me as decades have come and gone is this: what did the Gor Mahia and Kenya Breweries sides of 1979, 1987 and 1994 and the Harambee Stars side of 1987 have that eludes all other Kenyan teams?

In 1979, Gor Mahia reached but lost the final of the Nelson Mandela Cup and won it in 1987. Kenya Breweries, now Tusker, reached the final of the same tournament in 1994. And Harambee Stars were the silver medallists of the 1987 All Africa Games. In all those cases, Kenya was playing the best Africa had to offer.

STABLE ERA

What happened? It cannot be organisation because the country has consistently been mediocre in its organisation save for some instances when there was inspired leadership.

In fact, the country’s football is going through one of its most stable and peaceful eras in many years. It could be the reason that as a result of this, we have qualified for the Afcon finals after a 15-year period. Poor organisation is not unique to Kenya. They have it in Cameroon, Nigeria and many other places.

Talent? If it is this one, where did the one we had before go? And in any case, who are more naturally talented – the Germans or the Brazilians? Is it talent or the scientific development of a football player that produces results in the end? Who between the one who relies on talent alone and the one who goes for cutting edge technology to “manufacture” a player will win? What stops the country from implementing Cramer’s vision?

One intriguing phenomenon I have witnessed over the years is the gradual diminishing in physical size of Kenya’s players as compared to their West African counterparts. Cameroon, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and to some extent Ghana have consistently big, strong men. When we played them in the 1960s and 70s, there was almost no difference. The Theophile Abegas, Emannuel Kundes, Stephen Keshis and Anthony Yeboahs were the same sizes as our Elijah Lidondes, Daniel Nicodemus’, Paul Oduwos and Jonathan Nivas.

Many of our players were hulking in sizes. I don’t know when this started to happen but somewhere along the way, I started picking out, with diminishing returns, players who could survive crashes with their forebears. Dennis Oliech was one of them. Allan Wanga was another. Keep counting.

Is it dietary changes or something else? Maybe both because for as long as I can remember, Kenyans across the length and breadth of the country love ugali and nyama choma and its kachumbari accompaniments.

But, of course, the list of the exotic foods that are on offer now stretch from one end of the horizon to the other. (Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko is on record as saying the City County has no capacity of determining whether the food being consumed in its area of jurisdiction is fit for human consumption or not. The less said about that admission, the better since there is no chance of recalling him.)

To get the picture of mystery that I am painting, look for a photograph of the 1972 team that represented Kenya in Cameroon. Look at the physiques of James Siang’a, Jonathan Niva, Charles Makunda, Daniel Anyanzwa, Peter Ouma, Allan Thigo, Jackson Aluko, John Nyawanga, Nicodemus Arudhi, William Chege Ouma and Stephen Yongo.

Now look at that of the 2019 team in Egypt. See the difference? One of the aspects of the old team that the photograph won’t show you is the sheer physical power packed in those legs; a cannon ball shot from Arudhi the imposing midfielder and night-time robber was a spectacle to behold.

Harambee Stars will Sunday night play a team that made one of the biggest contributions to justice in the history of the game. It was a massive blow against racism. It happened in the 1982 World Cup. Germany, then playing as West Germany, were European champions and title favourites.

It was then that the Desert Foxes pulled off one of the World Cup’s greatest upsets by defeating Germany 2-1 in a Group 2 match. Algeria played their final group game the day before Germany and Austria met for their own last match. Both teams went into it knowing that 1-0 win for Germany would qualify them both while a bigger German victory would qualify Algeria and Austria. A draw or a win for Austria would qualify Algeria and Austria and eliminate the Germans.

Knowing thus, the teams got into probably the most infamous conspiracy known to football. After Germany scored their first and only goal, the teams simply stopped playing. They just kicked the ball aimlessly around. A German television commentator asked his viewers to switch off their sets and then stopped commentating. A German fan burnt his national flag in disgust. From the stands, Algerian supporters waved bank notes at the players.

It was after that match that Fifa decreed that final group games would henceforth be played simultaneously. “Our performances forced Fifa to make that change, and that was even better than a victory. It meant that Algeria left an indelible mark on football history,” remarked star forward Belloumi.

That is class. If they beat us, I won’t weep.