Sports Fund could be final hope for cash-strapped clubs
What you need to know:
- The year has begun with Nzoia Sugar FC being unable to honour their tie against Bandari FC in Mombasa.
- They remain within two walkovers of facing the same fate as Sony. It has taken decades to build Kenyan football and we cannot afford to let it die just like this. That is why the government aid is very necessary.
The year 2019 was a very bad one for Kenyan football. And the New Year, 2020, is promising to be even worse. We’ve held on like bulldogs onto the issue of cash-strapped teams in the Kenya Premier League to the extent of boring our readers.
We have not done even a single detour to deal with other issues affecting the management of the Kenyan game. We have received lots of responses from Kenyans over the matter with some tossing up possible solutions, with some downright abusive but the greatest percentage urging us to give up and get something better to do.
They are of the opinion that Kenyan football is dead and it is only worthwhile if we totally forget about it. We have done our best to address such feedback. One letter though deserves mention here, so that we may try to clarify the situation a bit. One Charles Ouko writes:
“With reference to your December 30 article in the Daily Nation. Pray, tell me why my monies as a tax payer, should be put into a private enterprise that I have absolutely nothing to do with?
When Liverpool were in Qatar for the Club World Cup, do you think the Johnson Administration should/would have given them funding, even though their participation and consequent victory, made global headlines?
The points raised by the gentleman are valid and we respect them. However, the assumption that Kenyan football teams are private enterprises is factually incorrect.
There are very few teams that are owned by individuals and corporates.
Most of them are just community clubs that make no profits even though they do provide employment to the youth that ply the trade.
The analogy between Liverpool and, say, Kakamega Homeboyz is thus invalid. Secondly, in any capitalist country where private property is hailed, during economic recession, the government intervenes with tax payers’ monies to keep the private enterprises alive. This move always saves jobs and lubricates the economy.
It is in this same spirit that the Kenyan government always spends taxpayers’ money to revive dead industries like Pan Paper and many others.
We must admit that our economy at the moment is in a sorry state. We do not know and cannot even foresee how soon we shall rise from the slump. This has affected every sector of the economy and we expect even more job losses.
The Ministry of Sports, through the Sports, Art and Social Development Fund, can give a palliative for the present condition and save job losses in the football sector. As we write this, Sony Sugar FC were relegated for not honouring their ties due to lack of funding for the club.
The year has begun with Nzoia Sugar FC being unable to honour their tie against Bandari FC in Mombasa.
They remain within two walkovers of facing the same fate as Sony. It has taken decades to build Kenyan football and we cannot afford to let it die just like this. That is why the government aid is very necessary.
