CECAFA the home of TALENT

If you've of heard of Shabani Nonda, Olivier Karekezi, Dennis Oliech, McDonald Mariga, Victor Wanyama and Mbwana Samatta, then you know that Cecafa football is where they were made. And the stage is set for more displays of talent at the 2014 Kagame Cup in Rwanda, writes GISHINGA NJOROGE from Kigali

Harambee Stars striker Dennis Oliech trains at Nyayo Stadium on May 13, 2014. [PHOTO:DENNIS OKEYO/STANDARD]

East Africa, if you do not include spiritual members Ethiopia and Sudan, has never staged the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) football finals.

Kenya almost did in 1996, when they had official hosting rights but were found unprepared just months to the competition and it was moved to South Africa.

These days, opportunity to organise AFCON is so fiercely fought for, it is almost like the Olympics and the World Cup. Zambia have laid on attractive necessary infrastructure, hoping to be the first Central African state to host the event, in 2019.

Which East African Community member will be the first to do it, perhaps in 2021?

Joint-hosting, like in the 2012 edition shared by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, are not common, but if you ask people in Rwanda, they will tell you that another co-hosting event can happen in this region.

Rwanda will host next year’s second-tier Africa soccer event, the African Nations Championship (CHAN) that pits teams made up of only players in national domestic leagues. (AFCON is open to all-comers, including citizens playing club football outside the continent.)

The Rwandese are hopeful that after CHAN, it will be on to the coveted AFCON. But they see that it should be an East and Central African event. Their view is that ‘unity is strength’ and solidarity from fellow East Africans would help. Rwanda is a small country, space-wise, with a population of 11 million.

 

Good organisation

While staging this year’s Council of East and Central Africa Football Associations (Cecafa) Kagame Cup Club Championship, Rwanda have their eyes firmly on the organisation of next year’s CHAN and receiving Africa when the continent visits their country.

You can see it in the good organisation of the Kagame Cup; an unprecedented excellent tournament, done a huge favour by the brilliant performance of most teams taking part this year.

The Government here is supervising the completion of two other stadiums outside Kigali to host CHAN.

Kigali, especially, is a place that is bustling with energy as a city to counter-balance the might of Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Kampala across the borders. These are cities, all within an hour and a half flight reach, that Rwanda feel could help to host AFCON as soon as 2021.

Some great matches are taking place at the Kagame Cup and all 34 [19 by Thursday] of them will be ‘live’ on SuperSport TV. And people have taken note.

In Kenya, while admiring the quality of play on the screen, anxiety surrounds how the Kenyan game rates because the Kenyan Premier League champions, Gor Mahia, lost their opening two Group B matches.

On Friday, in their attempt to escape from elimination, they drew 2-2 against local champions APR.

Even from London, Sports News Africa called for a review of the opening weekend games as well to follow the action in subsequent days.

They were also interested in the early shock upsets when debutants Rwanda Police beat the Khartoum giants El Merreikh 1-0 and Djibouti’s Telecom huge shock of winning against Uganda’s Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) 2-1.

By then, 23 goals in six matches was the rare average in a closely fought competition.

Sports News Africa also wished to know how much impact Cecafa football had in the motivation of players coming off the leagues in the region.

The answer: A lot more than regional football organisation is given credit for. And there are several bright examples.

Take, for instance, Atletico Olympique, a club from Bujumbura, Burundi. Atletico is the origins of Shabani Nonda whose breeding was in regional football before he went on to star in Monaco, in a five-year stint between 2000 and 2005, playing 115 times and scoring 57 goals.

When he left Atletico Olympique in 1992, Nonda joined Tanzania giants Young Africans of Dar es Salaam and went on to play in the Cecafa Club Cup, which his Yanga club won in 1993. He then signed up with Vaal Professionals in South Africa before being snapped up by Europe.

His itinerary took him to Zurich, Rennes, Monaco, Roma, Blackburn Rovers and finally to Galatasaray where he ended his career in 2010, while maintaining an incredible 10-year presence on his DR Congo national team for whom he played 36 times and scored 20 goals.

When the Cecafa Challenge Cup (tournament for national teams) took place in Tanzania in 2002, one of the schoolboy stars in the competition was Kenya’s Dennis OFliech. He was a scorer in Kenya’s defeat of the host team Tanzania in the final played in the Lake Victoria-side town of Mwanza.

Oliech was quickly snapped up by Qatari club Al Arabi where, between 2003-2005, he scored 12 goals for them before they lost him to Nantes.

Oliech was to later move to Auxerre and on to current Ajaccio. Since 2002, he has played 63 times for his country, scoring 34 goals.

Rwanda club APR, a regular feature in the Cecafa Club Championship, produced the country’s most famous footballer, Olivier Karekezi, who went on to star in the Scandinavian League, turning out for Swedish giants Helsingborg.

Karekezi started youth football at APR in 1989, progressing to win APR’s first of three Kagame Cup titles in 2004. From there he joined Helsingborg for his most successful stint in Europe, playing 60 times and scoring 18 goals.

 

National career

He moved to other clubs before rejoining APR in 2011-12. He ended his Rwanda national team career in 2013, having played 55 times and scoring 25 goals.

The biggest products of Cecafa football would surely be the two Kenyan brothers, Victor Mugubi Wanyama (Southampton) and the older McDonald Mariga (Internazionale).

Mariga honed his talents at Cecafa football for both his Nairobi club, Tusker and the national team Harambee Stars when he was a schoolboy protégé alongside Oliech. Wanyama was snapped up by Europe before seeing much of Cecafa action.

In 2006, Wanyama joined his first top flight league team, AFC Leopards, but only briefly before moving to Nairobi City Stars in the same year.

It was from here that Helsingborg signed him in 2007, selling him to Beerschot in 2008 from where the big break came and he joined Glasgow Celtic in 2011. Southampton bought Wanyama from Celtic in 2013.

One of the top strikers in African club football currently is Tanzanian Mbwana Aly Samatta, who is the marksman from DR Congo’s TP Mazembe. Samatta migrated to Congo after playing for Simba of Dar es Salaam, Cecafa Club Cup’s most successful club with six titles.

 

Star football

Cecafa football is where a lot of dreams about star football take place. This time round, a prominent man among many talent scouts in Kigali is Russell Molefe.

The South African hopes to see something good that he can take down to his PSL (Premier Soccer League) champions of 2013/14, the Mamelodi Sundowns.

The Cecafa championships is the perfect stage for recruiting. From Kenya alone this year, Paul Were went from AFC Leopards to Amazulu and Kevin Omondi from Gor Mahia to the PSL.

Steadily, in Cecafa, an excellent platform to expose regional football talent is taking shape; the statistics are simply dramatic.

Exports to the rest of Africa and other minor leagues around the world are taking place and they have grown over the years.