With financial muscle, Gor Mahia will rule Africa

Last Wednesday, Gor Mahia made a massive statement by hammering Tanzania giants Young Africans 4-0.

I was at the stadium as K'Ogalo showed Yanga who is boss scoring twice in each half to register our first win in the group stages of the Caf Confederation Cup.

While we expected Gor Mahia to win, nobody expected a victory of such a margin.

That win gives us high hopes of qualifying to the quarter-finals of the competition in the modern day era making us the first Kenyan side to achieve such a fete.

Already we are the only Kenyan club to have reached the group stage of the continental club championship, something that makes me very proud.

That Gor Mahia is the most successful club in Kenya is not debatable, we are the only club in the country and the region to have won a continental title.

But it will take us back to 1987 when we watched Austin Oduor "Makamu" lifting the title, we have waited too long... 31 years.

I do believe Gor Mahia, in its current form can actually go all the way and lift the CAF Continental Cup this year if their performance so far in the competition is anything to go by.

But on the flipside, if we do not win it, we have already made a statement, a strong one that should make other clubs in Africa wary of us.

One post in the social media on Gor Mahia caught my eye and I think the writer (I don't remember his name) had the same reasoning as me. The writer said that while Gor Mahia remains one of the strongest clubs in the continent its biggest undoing is lack of finances.

According to this guy, if Gor Mahia had the kind of money Zambia or South African clubs have, they would dominate Africa club competitions. This statement is to some extent very true.

I have always stated in this column, we must professionalise our club management and operations if we are to move to the next level.

The sad thing is we are still running the club the same way we did in 1968 when Bethwel Ogot, Tom Mboya and others sat down to form this club.

Granted, Ambrose Rachier has done so much for Gor Mahia and he stands out as the most successful chairman the club has had, but we have to change how things are done at the club to move to a level where we will match the likes of TP Mazembe and Al Ahly in Africa.

We are already dominating the local scene, we are always happy winning the local league, but we are no longer excited about it because it has become extremely normal for us to win the Kenyan Premier League, we now want to start dominating Africa. But to do so, we need financial muscle.

With financial muscle, we will be able to attract the best talent in Africa, probably beyond Africa. We will build our own stadium, our club house, complete with a gym and hostels for the players.

We will also be able to pay players on time and ensure other clubs do not bully us around by offering our players better pay the way Simba did with Meddie Kagere. I do believe this is very possible.