Despite challenges, Wanderers aim to shine in NSL

The 2019/20 National Super League (NSL) season kicks off on Sunday with six new entrants.

Vihiga United and Mt Kenya United relegated from the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) join new boys Muranga Sports Excellence Academy, Vihiga Bullets and Administration Police Service (APS) Bomet FC, who were promoted to the second-tier from the Division League league.

Joining the five teams above is Northern Wanderers, a team from Northern Kenya, who acquired Eldoret Youth. The team will kick off their campaign with a home match against Nairobi Stima at the Camp Toyoyo grounds in Nairobi on Sunday afternoon.

The team should ideally be hosting their matches in North Eastern, but there are no stadia in the whole region fit to host league matches. They have been forced to relocate to Nairobi and team manager Noordin Badel says they are already struggling to cope.

“It is a shame that not even a single county in North Eastern has a stadium that can host league matches. Marsabit, Isiolo, Garissa, Wajir, Mandera and Tana River Counties have many football fans that would have really enjoyed watching this team play in the NSL, but we have been forced to relocate to Nairobi.

All those counties have departments of sports and we wonder what they do yet we don’t even have just one descent facility that can host a game! We are forced to hire Camp Toyoyo daily and it is not cheap for a team with no sponsor,” Badel lamented to Nation Sport.

“We have been forced to accommodate the team in a 7-bedroomed house in Buruburu and it hasn’t been an easy ride for us so far. Leaders from North Eastern led by our chairman Aden Duale promised a lot initially and we were even supposed to have a fundraising dinner, but none of that has happened yet. We have been harassed by police in the house before suspecting us to be terrorists and these and other challenges are really demoralizing the players.”

So dire is the situation that when Nation Sport visited the team in training on Thursday afternoon, only a handful of players were present and the session did not kick off as Noordin was busy trying to secure the release of a larger chunk of players, who had been arrested in Buruburu in the house hosting the team.

Census Enumerators had come in with police just as the boys were preparing to leave for training and in the ensuing melee the boys were arrested.

Despite all these challenges, Suleiman Mohammed Abdi, who features for the team as an offensive midfielder, is convinced the team will do well in the NSL.

“All these challenges are taking a toll on us especially psychologically, but we have a good team consisting of the best players from Garissa, Mandera, Wajir, Moyale and Isiolo and our plan is to at least finish in the top half of the table in our debut season. I am optimistic we will achieve our target.”

Noordin, the team manager, says the driving force behind the formation of the team is to expose the talent in Northern Kenya; “We have very talented boys and girls in Northern Kenya, but most of them never make it to the top level due to the fact that the part of Kenya is segregated and that is we combined local teams to form one strong team to play in the National Super League. This is a good platform to expose their talents and I’m sure some of them will be scouted by good clubs once we start competing.

“We have had a few friendly matches and all our opponents have been surprised by our ability. I am convinced that we will do well in the NSL and open the eyes of everyone in Kenya to realise that we are passionate and talented in sports despite coming from an arid region," he concludes.