Stars must forget: Stars must forget ‘underdog' comoros tag

You cannot criticise Adel Amrouche. He is the only one with the mandate to select the national soccer team and earlier in the week he definitely had good reasons to have picked who he did.                                                                                    

 But scour the landscape, bring up all the names of those you were told just a while back that they were the hopes of the future and you’ll tend to wonder; “what’s going on here?”

Amrouche has named 17 home-based men to prepare for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against the Comoros.

An addition from the “foreign legion” will complete the squad about five days to the first leg tie in Nairobi next weekend.

There cannot be room for everybody. But history has shown that often when deserving players are left out, often, the selectors are not even aware they exist.

Poor record keeping about those emerging from below — age group football of the Under-20s and Under-17s — results is many being ignored.

 It may be happening again.

It was Amrouche who thought, for example, that even though Andrew Murunga was only 18 and playing for the lowly Karuturi Sports last season, he was an excellent prospect and picked him for the larger squad that was to play Nigeria in a Fifa World Cup qualifier last June.

And after Harambee Stars’ quest for a place in Brasil 2014 was quashed by the defeat by Nigeria, in Kenya’s very next “dead rubber” against Malawi, Murunga was actually a starter in place of Dennis Oliech who abdicated.

proud draw

It was a proud 2-2 draw for the debutant rookie.

Where is Murunga? His Karuturi Sports fell off the Kenyan Premier League — demoted after the end of last season — and maybe that is how he went into oblivion.

Does Amrouche remember Murunga and names of other 12 players that were on his top list so recently?

Recent home-based Harambee Stars’ call-ups — who played for Kenya less than 12 months ago — you will not see in the current squad; what is the explanation?

It is a good thing if much better talent has been discovered; and if in fact that is the reason why rookies Harrison Mwendwa, Hilary Otieno, Oliver Ruto and Geoffrey Kataka have been picked ahead.

But it would be tragic if the trend of discarding players for no apparent reasons other than shoddy scouting was still the Kenyan football culture.

Sample this: In 1999, Kenya had the best Under-20 boys’ team in the region which won the Cecafa [Council of East and Central Africa Football Associations] Youth Championship.

At the time, they were hailed as a rough diamond; that if kept together they would perform wonders in the near future.

Yet, by 2004 when the oldest among them would have been a ripe experienced 24-year-old, only one made Jacob “Ghost” Mulee’s team for the Africa Cup of Nations finals in Tunisia — the last time Kenya went to the AFCON.

Today they are talking excitedly about an Under-20 squad that was recently bundled out of the African Youth Championship qualifiers by Tanzania.

Earlier, a group largely comprising the same lads had reached the final of a tournament in South Africa.

Are people just giving lip-service in idle talk that the team should be preserved for the future? Is this serious talk and are there concrete plans?

There will never be a clearer example of waste of talent and development efforts in Kenya football than in that Youth Championship team of ’99.

Today, none of them would be more than 33 years-old. Yet, among the Harambee Stars veterans you know, all come ahead of or behind these.

John Baraza is 38 and was hitting goals for Kenya well after he was 33. Goalie Duncan Ochieng’ is 35.

The man who is now 33, like the Class of ’99, is current Kenya defender James Mulinge of Ulinzi Stars, but Mulinge was not in the youth side of ’99.

Others who came on the heels and are still playing are Frederick Onyango, Wilson Obungu and James Situma (all 29).

The class of ’99 seemed to have been a total disappointment. By last season, the only name you recognized in active football was that of George Midenyo, 32, the ex-Tusker front man who had a performance of sorts at Gor Mahia before being off-loaded.

The only exception -- as a player with good international promise -- was Philip Opiyo.

Opiyo played in the 2004 AFCON finals in Tunisia. But his career would be blighted by stories of drug use.

At the time he won the Cecafa Youth Championship with Kenya, Opiyo was at Mathare United where he had made a Kenyan Premier League debut as a fearless young defender.

He played for Mathare until 2003, finishing runner-up in the league’s player of the year voting in 2001.

brief spell

After a brief spell with Tusker in 2003, Opiyo moved to South Africa to sign with Premier Soccer League’s (PSL) side Free State Stars.  The following season he joined Umtata Bush Bucks but he was suspended by the league following a failed drugs test in February 2005.

After a while in the wilderness, Opiyo tried to resurrect his career back in Kenya playing for Sofapaka in 2007 and later Bandari but his impact was unfelt and he drifted off.

Not looking after talented young players so that they realise their full potential is a Kenyan football disease.

The German Government’s Technical Co-operation [GTZ] posted to Kenya Football Federation [KFF] a development coach Manfred Steves who, with local coaches John Champion, Tom Olaba, Bob Oyugi, and Mickey Weche scouted and molded the winning team of ’99.

These players, who would have been at their peak after the KFF leadership of Maina Kariuki but  found themselves, since 2006,  trapped in the leadership wars of the Football Kenya Limited [FKL] headed by Mohamed Hatimy and the Sam Nyamweya-led Kenya Football Federation [KFF] which lasted till December 2011. It was literally a whole football life-time of these players.

So, you may ask, in the next half a dozen years, how many of the currently celebrated Under-20 national team will have made it in to big-time football?