Why local football matches consolidate our friendships

By T Michael Mboya

Early Sunday afternoon. I am in my usual position at the counter in my local pub. On my sides are friends. They are also regulars here. A Kenya Premier League football match is showing on the television that is perched on a low refrigerator that stands against the wall we sit facing. The match is the reason for our being here this early. We are the kind of Kenyan lovers of televised football that include ‘game yetu’ (Kenyan football) in our menu. Which fact defines us as belonging to a minority in Eldoret. In this town televised football usually refers to the English Premier League. We are wearing the jerseys of the teams we support. I am in a K’Ogalo jersey, two friends are in Ingwe jerseys.

It is not for a lack of appreciation of what makes for good football that we watch the Kenyan Premier League. Thanks to VOK TV (and its later reincarnation, KBC TV) we all grew up exposed to good football. The station has dutifully broadcast the major international championship finals – continental international and club cups and the World Cup – which since ‘way back when.’

Over the years we have also watched Football Made in Germany, Road to Wembley and even Brazilian Football on that channel.

In addition, in our younger years, before we knew one another, we frequented the stadia in Nairobi.

That was over the 1980s, a period today fondly remembered as a golden era of Kenyan football. (Speaking of the 1980s, do you remember that only matches of the lower strata of the provincial leagues were played early in the afternoon back then?)

We enjoy ‘game yetu’ as it is, without comparing it to ‘good football.’ We do not expect to find in it the high levels of technical ability, the athleticism and the brilliant overall team strategies one finds in the best football in the world. In the unlikely event that they materialise, we take their appearance as a bonus. Given that we watch the Kenyan Premier League on television while knowing full well that the matches do not come close to constituting ‘good football,’ it is tempting to agree with those who say that our following of the local game is part of our reproduction of aspects of our cultural identities. That may be so, but it is not all.

The match is on. Now and again the linguistic gymnastics of the SuperSport commentators tickles. One of us has characterised the commentary as comedy. The gymnastic manouvres provoke mini discussions among us, discussions that are part of the usual non-directed friend talk that goes in a pub.

Only that football time talk like the one we are engaged in is more truncated than usual. There are too many interruptions: an attack, a nasty foul, a bad refereeing call. The friend to my left is neither watching the match nor participating in the talk. He is busy with his phone. Every so often he swipes its screen. He is the only one in the group that is ‘digital,’ and so we know he is on one or other (anti-)social media site.

‘Has anyone scored?’ he asks at regular intervals.

‘Game yetu’ obviously consolidates our friendships. That probably explains why we are enjoying this match together even though we are rooting for different teams. When one perceives that his team is not playing well he criticices it. When one perceives that the opposing team is playing well he praises it.

The ‘spectacle’ puzzled a friend I once towed to this pub to watch a game with me. That friend supports the team I support. At the end of the match he remarked: “You guys are not fans; you are mere supporters.”

He was right. We are not passionate. And maybe that is the reason none of us risks a trip to the stadium to watch these games ‘live.’ I guess for us, Kenyan football is just a game — it literally is ‘game yetu.’