Wazito should lighten up and play football, not talk aimlessly
What you need to know:
- This should be the path Wazito should take. Mathare has a place where real people live and have seen the benefits of the club being in their midst.
- The club has organised socially beneficiary things for the community and thus they love and follow their team. It is theirs!
- There is no need for the “siege mentality” Hall is insinuating!
Before the Wazito versus Ulinzi Stars match in Machakos on Saturday last, their “new” coach Stewart Hall was quoted in a section of the media saying things that got us thinking.
We are well aware that the Briton has done much for the team since he took charge. We may not have praised him in the press nor commented much about his team’s great progress, and for that omission we sincerely regret.
To say the truth, we in the media are obsessed with the teams that command a huge fan base since we instinctively know that many readers are interested in them.
Since Stewart Hall took charge of Wazito, replacing Melis Medo in November, they inched up slowly from the relegation zone and by last Saturday were in the 13th position in the league.
The match between Wazito and the tough Ulinzi ended in a draw which is a huge plus to the new guys in the top league and shows that they have developed greatly mentally.
Hall was quoted saying: “I’ve not set a target for these players but we want to win as many league matches as possible and have a good run in the cup competition”.
Well, we expect such words from any good manager. Hall didn’t stop there. He went on: “Wazito have had a lot of criticism; some of it they deserve but some they don’t.
Some of it is out of jealousy because they have a lot of money and most of Kenyan football is bankrupt. So we created what we call a siege mentality. The media hates us, the fans hate us and everybody hates us.”
We do not know who hates Wazito this much but that statement perplexed us. Which fans hate Wazito FC? Are they Wazito fans or fans of other clubs? Which media hates Wazito? Have we ever in these pages written negative things about them? Who is everybody?
If the so called “siege mentality” is working for the lads of Wazito, they should go on with it. But it will not be good for them in the long run and we are certain of that.
There are many teams in the Premier League that have done great things but have never had a siege mentality as their policy. We have watched big teams like Tusker and Sofapaka play.
The matches are usually tough and worth attending but the problem is that the stadiums are usually empty. The reason for this anomaly is that they do not command a huge following.
The community clubs on the other hand, have many fans as we saw during yesterday’s Mashemeji derby. What these teams require is to endear themselves to the people and get diehard fans.
This should be the path Wazito should take. Mathare has a place where real people live and have seen the benefits of the club being in their midst.
The club has organised socially beneficiary things for the community and thus they love and follow their team. It is theirs!
There is no need for the “siege mentality” Hall is insinuating!
