FKF, please pay your debts

Well done Adel Amrouche, for fighting for your right!

Well done for, by your actions, loudly speaking up and standing up for your fellow coaches who have over the years suffered, many in silence, from the utterly unprofessional, unacceptable and immoral acts of successive offices of Kenya’s football governing body.

Amrouche, the street-wise Algerian-born Belgian reported Football Kenya Federation to Fifa claiming compensation of Sh132million in 2018. Fifa, after carefully looking at his evidence directed that FKF pay him Sh60 million.

Not satisfied, Amrouche took his case to the Court for Arbitration of Sport in Lausanne and was awarded Sh109 million. Unhappy with the ruling, FKF lodged an appeal in the same court. It was thrown out.

“He (FKF president Nick Mwendwa) came with three lawyers. He was ready to pay the lawyers from Europe millions of shillings but not me,” observed Amrouche recently while accusing the federation of dishonesty.

The mantra for the federation it seems is: Can’t pay, won’t pay. And this dog has been playing the same trick for a long time.

Remember German coach Reinhardt Fabisch? He was one of the most popular Harambee Stars coaches in Kenya’s football history. That he had three separate stints with the Kenyan boys illustrates this point abundantly.

The best was easily his first call of duty when he guided a suave and supremely confident Stars to the final of the 1987 All Africa Games football tournament where they fell by a solitary goal to continental giants Egypt at a jam-packed Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani.

Others consider his second stint more memorable. He built a young, talented Harambee Stars squad from scratch and took it to the brink of qualifying for the 1998 Fifa World Cup.

That team ran a star-studded Nigerian outfit rugged in Nairobi in an exciting 1-1 draw. The German came back again in 2001 only to be summarily sacked a year later.

The divorce was acrimonious, with Fabisch demanding unpaid dues totaling millions and the federation dismissively stating they owed him nothing.

Fabisch passed on in July 2008, his pay dispute with the federation unresolved and buried. Henry Michel died in April 2018 while still owed over Sh4 million in salary arrears by the federation as decided by Fifa after the Frenchman took his pay dispute to the world football body.

Jacob “Ghost” Mulee, another coach who had three stints with Harambee Stars is famously remembered for first, winning the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup in 2003, Kenya’s first title in 20 years, and guiding the team to the 2004 Africa Cup of Nations after a 12-year hiatus.

He says various federation regimes cumulatively owe him Sh7 million - Sh4 million as coach and Sh3 million as technical director. To the current office’s credit, two years ago they committed to settling his debts on a monthly basis, but alas, not a cent has been paid to date!

Talkative Mohamed Kheri, who had two stints with Harambee Stars, the more illustrious, his first between 1988 and 1990 when he guided the team to the 1990 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, says he is owed over Sh5 million.

Nigerian Christian Chukwu, Zedekiah “Zico” Otieno, James Nandwa, this list goes on, have all given their services as national team coaches and left the post owed millions by the federation.

I almost forgot. Hired in 2015, Scot Bobby Williamson, like Amrouche, sued the federation after he was relieved of his duties in 2016. The labour court awarded him Sh55 million last year that he has yet to be paid.

This is not how to treat our national football head coaches.

The federation, as long as it is the one mandated to run football in this country, should quit whining and whinging about mistakes of past offices, honestly go through its books, regardless of who was in charge, identify who they owe what, and work on a schedule of clearing these debts, no matter how long it will take. Cant’ pay, won’t pay, just does not wash. Even with sanitizer.

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