Petra raring to change face of the beautiful game

Football Kenya Federation Deputy President elect Doris Petra during the interview with The Sunday Standard Magazine at the Nyayo stadium,Nairobi. February 23rd,2016. Photo/Elvis Ogina (Nairobi)

I will bet the highest FIFA ranking on this: You will most definitely miss Football Kenya Federation's physical address.

I did.

Even seasoned photographer, Elvis Ogina missed it.

Here are the directions.

Turn right from the Nyayo National Stadium swimming pool, and the nondescript space is the boardroom.

Up a flight of terraces — where we bump into Michael Esakwa, the federation's CEO — is the main man's office, with worn-out blue blinds, files stacked on a shelf behind the mahogany desk, and an indicting dusty deflated football stuck inside a golden trophy.

With this stuffy room — in, of all places, swimming arena — as the nerve centre of the beautiful game. It is no wonder that Kenyan football is going under.

It is at the swimming arena where I meet the new Vice President of FKF, Doris Petra.

She is in the boardroom, seated at the head of the table, while her two colleagues type the mid-morning away.

As the affable football official reveals, their ergonomically unfit situation sums up the sorry state of local football.

There is not enough office room to swing a cat, and football administrators often jostle for working space in the boardroom.

The federation's employees — who sometimes go for as long as seven months without pay — are demoralised and slave only for the love of the game.

And, this is an open secret, the footie federation has, for wrong intents and purposes, been long run like a fiefdom.

Doris Petronilla Atieno — a mother of four girls and two boys — may not cut the mustard. May. That is, if you are used to the picture of the archetypal male-dominated football administration.

Looks can be deceiving.

Petra exudes a matronly air; what with her permed hair, combed to the back and sides, and purple and maroon skirt suit and black leather pumps.

As we chat in the boardroom, her fingers — with carmine nail polish — constantly rap the black flap cover of her mobile phone.

It is a reflexive motif that is replicated throughout the interview.

Maybe, (maybe not), this is just what the sports surgeon ordered, way back when. A feminine touch to perform a long-overdue radical surgery. But? Only time and trials of local football drama will tell.

Petra was born in Oyugis, Rachuonyo District, Nyanza Province.

Around the mid-Seventies, a friend, who was a goalkeeper, broke his leg during a match. When they visited him in hospital, he implored them, just before he passed away, not let his football career go to waste.

Petra may not have sworn to take the football and run with it to fulfill this 'keeper's last wish, but fate has a crazy way of charting our trajectories.

While employed at Telkom Kenya, she played netball for the institution's team, later becoming manager and then coach.

Then she found herself gravitating toward football, and, in her own words, "started my career from the lowest level."

Before the interview starts, Petra remarks, off the cuff, how at times, her schedule gets crazy.

She lives in Gilgil, which is approximately 121 kilometers north-west of Nairobi. This was her commute during the last four years that she was a member of FKF's National Executive Committee representing Rift Valley.

"I would come to Nairobi because I was running the Leagues and Competitions Committee. I would stay in hotels, and ask for reimbursements from the federation...some are reimbursed and others haven't been reimbursed to date.

"I worked for Telkom in the HR department until 2005, but I have a home in Nakuru, and own boutiques in Gilgil and Eldoret, which I run with my daughter. This makes it easier for me to dedicate my life to football administration."

Petra's rise from a just another girl child in the sticks to a big kahuna in Zurich was not a leisurely cruise on Easy Street.

She is the firstborn in a family of 11, and, back in the day, tilling land and herding livestock — and ample doses academics — was the order of the day.

As she rubs shoulders with, mostly, men, she will take courage in her deaconess mother's counsel: "Anybody can do anything."

With the exception of Arsenal, Petra says that, locally, she is not a supporter of big teams.

She loves youth teams, and religiously follows community teams. When I interject that youth teams are almost dead in Kenya, she concurs, but corrects me that in Nakuru, which was her branch, they had excellent youth activities.

Petra has done her share of incubations.

She was involved in the development of Oserian FC and Sulmac FC; the latter which became Homegrown FC and transformed into Finlays FC.

Besides, she was in the team that birthed Sher Agencies, which made it to the Premier League.

Any Kenyan armchair quarterback will have you know that there is such a phenomenon as the Bermuda Triangle, which, each year, swallows young players' footballing dreams.

Without these talents feeding local clubs and, ultimately, the national team, the country will always run the risk of some soccer supernova developing diva tendencies.

Petra is acutely cognizant of this stark reality, and is adamant that the magic bullet is building structures, ground up.

"The culture we have is that we only look for already-developed players. Our federation's structures have not favoured growth of youth football.

"We should have a policy where senior teams adopt youth teams, and we create leagues for youth teams. I also believe we should partner with schools, which are coached by trained teachers, participating in their elite league.

Plus, during school holidays we should have youth leagues. When we do this, these starlets will, steadily, trickle into the Harambee Stars squad."

She says that apart from putting structures into place, "I want to see promotion of teams on merit; not political as has been the norm. And, the other thing that's close to my heart: development of women football."

A new broom sweeps cleaner. But, let's keep it real, Petra is not exactly the dictionary's definition of, "new broom".

She is a been-there broom. Her bristles even did sweeping gigs for Sam Nyamweya's team: and now she has signed up for spring cleaning duty.

When I flash Petra with this red card, she does not hit the tunnel.

"It is not what I will now do differently: even then I was different," Petra waxes lyrical.

"That is why we managed to have leagues. I was extremely firm. One thing that made me differ with my colleagues was because of what I believed in. I pushed for things to be done rightly. I questioned wrong decisions. I was not and never will be a Yes Woman."

I tell Petra of misgivings I have heard through the grapevine about Nick Mwendwa, the FKF supremo, who, together with Petra & Co, were in the Team Change camp, which slapped their predecessor, Sam Nyamweya's team with a pink slip.

I tell Petra there are people who swear Nick is not all he is cranked up to be, and have written him off before he has even written his first memo.

Petra taps the flap of her phone, like it has the answers.

"Nick has a wide knowledge of football, within and outside the country. He is a team player. Look at what he has done with Kariobangi Sharks.

"Imagine what it will be like if he replicates the same best practices countrywide. We have already started. The local coach we have hired, Stanley Okumbi, is a tactician, disciplinarian and scout."

Kenyan Premier League is getting sweeter by the season.

Every ratel wants a piece of this honey.

Enter sports betting companies, which, apparently, can make it rain without losing sleep.

There have been divergent views about their sponsorship deals. Some see it as conflict of interest. Others perceive a glass that is half-empty.

But Petra sees stadiums that are always full. She opines that sponsorship is good for the game, especially for community clubs, like perennial rivals, Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards, whose fans and supporters fill the stadiums.

And about their current physical address and its unfit-for-football-management state, Petra says their first National Executive Committee meeting — which was held at the Goal Project in Kasarani — speaks volumes about their vision.

"Immediately we return from the FIFA Congress in Zurich, we will furnish the office in Kasarani," she says.

Petra, the FKF boss and FKF CEO left Kenya or Zurich on Wednesday evening to participate in the FIFA Congress and the election of the new FIFA president.

"The outstanding utilities bill for the facility at Kasarani is about a million bob. The Goal Project has been a wasted investment, and we want to put it to proper use," she says, and adds that by "March we're moving to the Goal Project."

Team Change has hit the ground running.

Which is all nice and neat

But Kenyans have collectively crossed their fingers, hoping that, like the previous posse, this group is not running on a treadmill.