Star in the making: Juma’s stellar rise to top of KPL scoring charts

My conversation with reigning SportPesa Premier League top scorer Masoud Juma started with Michael Olunga.

When Olunga rose from obscurity three years ago and became a recognisable name not only in Kenya but also in foreign leagues, he became god. At least for upcoming footballers with the ambitions of “making it” in their careers. Whatever it is they aspire to achieve.

Upcoming footballers in Kenya don’t just want to play like Olunga, they want to live his life - educated, focused, and hardworking, with a physique to boot.

I have interviewed Olunga many times in the course of his fledgling career in Kenya, and once more after he had turned professional, and I’m familiar with the tribulations and criticism he endured both locally and internationally as he walked the narrow path to football success.

So when I got the opportunity to interview Juma, I wanted to talk about his success, but also his failures. The failed trails in Sweden and South Africa in a span of two months.

The sharp criticism he received after he was called up to the national team this year, his social media bust-ups in which he repeatedly told Kenyan fans “I don’t need you”, the disappointment of having managed just 17 goals from his pre-season target of 25, and many others.

All these things were on my mind when I met Juma at Nation Center for two hours last month and the first question was obvious. How does it feel walking around town knowing that you are the reigning SportPesa Premier League Top Scorer?

“I feel very excited, actually. It is something that every striker would like to have. I didn’t just expect to win this, I planned it. If you look at my pre-season performance, you’ll realise that it was even better than what I achieved this season because I scored 12 goals in 10 games. That showed me that this would be a good season,” he says.

But like most success stories, Juma’s 2017 story began on a sour note, as he fractured his ankle in his team’s final pre-season friendly match, the injury ruling him out of action for seven weeks.

He admits that the injury spell was a very depressing period for him, as he felt he was losing out on his ambition to score 25 goals by the end of the season. What’s more, he had just joined Kariobangi Sharks from Sony Sugar, and he desperately needed to prove himself worthy of a starting role in the team early in the season.

Upon recovery, he was promptly put in the starting line-up. Even better, he earned a call-up to the national team after just three games.  And that is where his problems with the fans began.

At the time of his call-up, Juma had just returned from the ankle injury that had seen him miss the first five league matches. Also, his selection saw the likes of Ulinzi Stars veteran Stephen Waruru miss out on the squad despite having played more games and had also taken an early lead in the league scorers’ charts.

This, coupled by the fact that his Kariobangi Sharks team mates Ovella Ochieng and Patilla Omoto had also been included in the team, did not go down well with the vocal football fans who felt that the trio had been call-up to the team courtesy of the club’s association with Football Kenya Federation president Nick Mwendwa.

“When I was at Sony Sugar and got a national team call-up, everybody appreciated me. They even congratulated me. But when I joined Kariobangi Sharks and got called up to the team, people weren’t happy. I kept wondering whether they hated me as a person or the entire team, because I remember even my team mates Patilla and Ovella were dealing with the same thing,” he says.

“At some point, I even feared being on social media because the criticism was too much. I thank God for a friend Kifle, who also happens to be one of my biggest fans.

Whenever he saw someone write bad things about me, he would send me motivational quotes from some of the best footballers about how they handled criticism. He once sent me a picture of Cristiano Ronaldo saying that a player must never respond to criticism on social media, but concentrate on doing it on the pitch. That is the advice I took and concentrated on impressing on the pitch.

“I also drew inspiration from Michael Olunga when we met in Sierra Leone (for a 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier match). We sat together for about four hours when he told me how things were in Sweden before he made it.

He told me how he used to cry when people said he was the worst signing ever made by the club and how he continued to work hard until he found a breakthrough. It was then that I got even more courage to pursue my ambition,” he says.

Juma was born 21 years ago in Isiolo where he honed his football skills playing for different schools and academies. A second born child in a family of four, Juma got married to his childhood sweetheart Zainab Abdalla on September this year in Isiolo.

Zainab and Juma both completed their secondary school education at Isiolo Barracks Secondary, and Juma landed at the National Youth Talent Academy in Nairobi, then under the tutelage of current AFC Leopards team manager Gilbert Selebwa.

“After a few months at the academy Selebwa told me I was good enough to play in the Kenyan Premier League and he sent him to (National Super League team) Shabana. I stayed there for a month and scored five goals in four matches, before I was scouted by Bandari.

“I then left for Bandari in June 2014, signed a two-year contract and that is where my journey in the Kenyan Premier League started. After my contract expired in June last year I moved to Sony Sugar where I stayed for six months before Kariobangi Sharks came with an offer I couldn’t resist,” he says.

It was at Kariobangi Sharks that Juma’s star shone brightest, as he got a chance to travel to Sweden (AIK Fotball) and South Africa (Bidvest Wits) for trials.

“When I went to Sweden, people said it was all about the FKF president, but they don’t know that I have an agent who is working very hard and was behind the trip to Sweden. His name is Jamal and he is someone who comes to check out players in East Africa. Of course my club chipped in with part of the money required for my travel but it wasn’t entirely about the FKF president.

“I remember he came and watched our pre-season game against AFC Leopards this year in which I scored a brace. He approached me after the game and asked for my contacts, called me a week later and tell me that I was destined for greatness and that he wanted to make me a star.

“From that time he has been organising trials for me and even now I know that he is working on something. The fact that I have won the league’s Golden Boot obviously gives him even more bargaining power so I am waiting upon him and God because I really worked hard this season. I gave my best.”

But what exactly happened in the two trials?.

“When I was going to Sweden my agent told me I shouldn’t expect to be signed up by a club there and then. In fact I still had an injury at the time I travelled to Sweden so I just played three games. Jamal said I should just give it a try and see what comes out of it. Sadly, the Swedish season was on a break and I only managed to play three games in the two weeks I was there.

“I have ever asked Jamal what happened in Sweden. He just told me that things didn’t work out and I told him to let me go back to Kenya and do something with myself.

He suggested that I join a club in the Swedish Division One but I told him I wasn’t interested. I said, ‘I am going back to Kenya and I am going back to win the golden boot’. At the time I had only scored three goals. When the season ended, Jamal called me up to remind me of it,” he says, his face lighting up.

Then came the GOtv Shield round of 16 matches between his team Kariobangi Sharks and Sofapaka at Nyayo Stadium which, unbeknownst to Juma, was attended by scouts from South Africa.

“I scored a brace that day not knowing that there were agents on the ground. Jamal wasn’t at the stadium that day but after the match I was approached by two men who apparently were scouting for players to sell to different clubs in South Africa, and that is how I won the deal to go and train with Bidvest Wits.

“At Bidvest, things didn’t go well again. The management there said they were impressed with me but they also said that I had to wait for three weeks before getting a work permit, and it was only after I got the work permit that they would decide whether or not to employ me.

When I heard that, I refused to attend any more training sessions and said I needed to go back to my country immediately,” he says.

Juma has not attended any more trials this year, as he chose to concentrate on his dream of winning the top scorers’ award. Now that he has won it, he looks back in retrospect and says that the two trials were perhaps just distractions in his path that he is glad did not interfere with his ambition.

“I learnt a lot from the few sessions I had with coaches and players in Sweden and South Africa. The level of football in both countries is much higher that here in Kenya. Even the coaching styles are different. The pitches are different. There is no way you can fail to perform well in those conditions. Bit I realise now that my time had just not come yet,” he said.

So has he found a new suitor outside Kenyan borders? “I am a staunch Muslim and I believe all these things are planned by Allah. I am waiting upon him and my agent Jamal. I can’t tell where I will be next year because I still have a contract with Sharks.

But if I am to move from sharks, it won’t be to join AFC Leopards or Gor Mahia. It will be to join a bigger team,” he says.

Despite the widespread notion that he has discipline issues, Juma is a teetotaller by choice, and his role model is Barcelona and Uruguay star Luis Suarez, and locally Olunga.

“I don’t play to be great. Nor do I do it to be famous or to have money. I want to inspire people. I want to change the lives of a few people behind me. I want to live a lavish life, yes, but I also want something more than that.

I want to help some people who are looking up at me. I want people to respect me not because of what I have bought them or how I can treat them, but because of how hardworking I am, how talented I am and how inspirational I am.

That is why most of the time I choose to be indoors, just eating and sleeping. I don’t smoke and I don’t drink. My body is my asset, so I can’t do anything that would harm my body.

“My greatest vice was my love for women. I liked to date several young girls in the past but I have since matured and I actually got married on September 16 this year,” he offers.