Wrangling among football officials will take a heavy toll on players

Latest developments in local football are frightening. When I wrote here last week that the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) was the most likely to lose in its battle with Football Kenya Federation (FKF), I didn’t imagine the magnitude of their loss.

Essentially, I didn’t think KPL would lose this much. That escalated real fast.
As the rest of the continent was busy this week in some hotel in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, doing draws for the Africa Cup of Nations 2015, we were being told of proposed drastic changes in our national league, key among them the national federation getting actively involved in all financial dealings of the KPL.

Other proposed changes included renaming the league to Football Kenya Federation Premier League, FKF-PL. What a mouthful of a name! Even if it were recognition that the federation needed in Kenya’s most successful football competition, they would have sourced for a better and easier to pronounce name.

I smell insecurity here. You see, a husband does not have to keep making daily announcements of how he is the head of the family. Of course, he is, even without demanding that people prostrate at his sight.

But that aside, the more intriguing move was that of asking football clubs to register afresh with the federation by December 15, lest they fail to be recognised thus banned from any football activities in the country.

Of course, the clubs must subscribe to the sole custodian of the game, but going ahead to demand that the federation be involved in the clubs’ commercial ventures sounds a joke taken too far. Soon we may hear a directive that instead of fans singing their club anthems before matches, they recite the federation’s loyalty pledge.
Now my fears of not having a national football league come next season are very alive. Things, as they currently are, are in disarray. Our goose is cooked.

I initially thought it would be those ‘normal’ chest-thumping wrangles between the two bodies, but now one has flexed muscles too much to the point the other cannot breathe.
As players and clubs are running around in the just opened transfer window, I sympathise with them because we may not have a league to take them in 2015.

This entire ego will not take us anywhere. How do we expect to build by demolishing? The biggest loser in this fiasco is the footballer.

For the whole period when we shall not have a league in place the players will have no income generating activity hence lowering the value of our league.

We have now reached the pinnacle of these wrangles and one can only hope against hope that something will be done pretty fast to help restore normalcy in the running of our top tier league. We must keep hoping.
@TomBWana