There is nothing premier about Kenya’s football

Kariobangi Sharks players after match against KCB in November 2019. They lost 5-0. [File, Standard]

For the second weekend running, Bundesliga has made football fans start talking about current events instead of history, which has been taking up most of their time in this extraordinary period.

While fans in other countries have been talking about history, and their footballing entities and officials have been trying to make history, in Kenya, people have been seeing history repeat itself.

Kenyans who follow the hollow Kenyan football scene, and specifically the poverty-worshipping Kenyan Premier League, have instead been seeing a repeat of one-upmanship by individuals tasked with managing football, who are gladly living in the past while footballers live in penury.

About 20 years ago, matters football in Kenya were mostly playing out in courts of law rather than in the stadia and when Football Kenya Federation was founded and other bodies and legislations put in place, it was thought that club and national officials will go back to playing on the rightful grounds.

Unfortunately, nothing has changed, except that now there is a Sports Dispute Tribunal which has made it even better for the perpetual protagonists because they now have more places where they can engage in their usual nether parts-measuring contest in the name of promoting Kenyan football.

While it is ludicrous to compare Kenya’s footballing fortunes with European leagues since they are several goals ahead in all aspects of the game, on and off the pitch, it is ridiculous to ignore their success, and only compare Kenya’s football to the worst.

In those countries where football is more than just an eight-letter word and is a beautiful game, footballers do earn a living from their sweat, literally -– and the game contributes to the general and overall economic growth.

All these European leagues that Kenyans are crazy about are income-generating and money-spinning activities that add billions of euros to the Gross Domestic Product of their respective countries.

In Kenya. footballers know only sufferance and officials who are not ready to embrace modern sports marketing strategies know nothing but gloating that Kenyan football is going places because a few players escaped from their doltish mentality to countries where their talent is recognised and duly rewarded. A few weeks ago, it was reported that footballers linked to the perennially cash-strapped Kenyan Premier League cannot make ends meet because there is no financial help from their clubs whose officials are waiting for the pandemic to end so that can start begging in the name of the players.

Of course, you would expect the bigger footballing body to come to the players’ rescue, but the demons who head that body are busy walking out of courts of law, into the hands of law enforcement officers to answer questions pertaining to misappropriation of funds meant for the national team.

It is pointless to write about the allegations made by the national team captain over players’ unpaid allowances because officials of both clubs and the national football body live off underhand deals and cannot mend their wicked, wicked ways and improve the welfare of the players.

In Kenya, players’ allowances getting pilfered is the norm, and if anything to the contrary ever happens, even the pilferers will be surprised by their own actions.

Stealing in the name of football has been institutionalised and normalised as a sporting activity. Unbridled stealing from footballers is fair game, so much so that these merchants of poverty can sell their parents and other relatives to get top positions from where they can shout about the growth of Kenyan football while stuffing their pockets with funds meant for players.

If there is something so valueless, useless and meaningless in Kenya today, it is football. Both the national football team and all sorts of football leagues, especially the Kenyan Premier League which has nothing premier about it and lacks all the merits of being called a league.

Kenya is as good as not having any league or a national team because nothing good comes from both and there is no hope that things will change, unless officials start employing the unwritten 18th law together with the written 17 Laws of Football.

While it is doubtful whether these thieving merchants of misery have the mentality to employ the unwritten law, the best thing would be disbanding what is remaining of the poverty-stricken Kenyan Premier League and all leagues below it, the national team and even the federation.

That way, local footballers can suffer through other ways and not at the hands of these purveyors of doom and gloom whose main sport is robbing the players and later engaging in blame game.

Clay Muganda is an Editor at The Standard