Club licensing needed urgently

Peter Thiongo

AFC Leopards' Peter Thiongo (left) vies for the ball with Vihiga Bullets’ Lucas Weitere during their Football Kenya Federation Premier League match at Nyayo Stadium on February 1, 2023.

Photo credit: Sila Kiplagat | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • They have already given away one walkover to Sofapaka FC and are thus on a tight rope.
  • We learn that some politicians have pledged to rescue the team from such dire straits but we still harbor legit doubts as to the viability of their promises.

Sometime back in 2016, there was a flurry of activity from the football quarters.

The federation wanted to introduce club licensing in our league for sanity to prevail and perhaps make the league’s stature to rise.

All stakeholders—and that term is really misused in this country — were invited for a conference to discuss the same.

The outcome was inconclusive and most of those concerned saw some ulterior motives from the organisers.

Perhaps there were such concealed motivations because we cannot write them off in these climes; the so called “small teams” complained about the issue saying that it was a ploy to lock them out of the mainstream football.

The established clubs were also not very supportive of the issue.

The main reason is that all well-managed leagues have club licensing. This ensures that a team must be financially viable before it is allowed to take part in a league season.

They must be able to afford the costs of running a team; they must be able to pay their players’ salaries and allowances in time; they must be able to honour all their matches slated for that season both home and away.

These simple issues are beyond the ability of many of the teams taking part in the Football Kenya Federation Premier League.

The so called established clubs are in the wrong books of both Caf and Fifa over salaries of their former players that have not been paid their pending dues.

We have had teams like Shabana Football Club that were relegated from the Premier League since they could not honour their away and even some home games due to lack of funds.

After three walkovers were awarded against them. The end result was a league with less teams and lots of confusion.

Last week we had the case of Vihiga Bullets who travelled to Nairobi after boda boda operators and mama mbogas raised funds for their one way trip to Nairobi to honour their match against AFC Leopards.

The lads arrived in Nairobi and played without even eating; they lost 1-0 to Ingwe and were left stranded in Nairobi asking well-wishers to help them get back home! It was a very sad and embarrassing situation.

We sympathise with those lads and we are sure had they been comfortable, things would have been different.

They have already given away one walkover to Sofapaka FC and are thus on a tight rope.

We learn that some politicians have pledged to rescue the team from such dire straits but we still harbor legit doubts as to the viability of their promises.