Let FKF Caretaker team give pass to a company to run the league

Borrowing from a near similar famous quote whose origin is undetermined, I say: anybody can complain, condemn and criticise, and most do.

Since the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) Caretaker Committee started work last week there have been lots of complaints, condemnations and criticism.

From the composition of the committee, the specific inclusion of certain individuals, a purported monstrous budget, ulterior motives of the Sports Cabinet Secretary, name it. Many brickbats have been thrown, without restrain, without thought.

A friend of mine, filled with many ideas but lacking the dishonest character to make a politician, used to tell me that whenever you condemn, complain or criticise, you should also offer solutions.

Do not just stand on the hilltop and shout “bad road!” Join a pressure group to agitate for the engineer to be blacklisted.

Do not just complain how badly your local club is run, become an active member and fight to bring change.

Countless former players and coaches have warned of a Fifa ban because of the action taken by the government to disband the FKF.

Others have cried out loudly at how they have been overlooked in the selection of the caretaker committee. Some active players have warned of how they will be adversely affected should Fifa ban Kenya.

But they should ask themselves, how did we get here? Importantly, what can they do to ensure our football never attracts government intervention that could/would lead to a Fifa ban?

I am glad a few rational football voices are offering nuggets of solutions.

Former FKF vice chairman Sammy Shollei wrote to the caretaker committee specifically asking them to waive the registration fee for clubs and county sports organisations to help get them in line with the Sports Act.

I liked what the new commercial manager of the Kenyan Premier League (KPL)Ltd Taiwo Otieno candidly said during a recent television talk show.

The former Kenya international observed that one major reason the game in the country had stagnated was the inability of clubs to transform into viable business enterprises.

And he nailed the problem on the head by pointing to the lack of professional management in our football.

“Well-run leagues have well-run clubs,” Taiwo deadpanned.

The much-travelled Kenyan-Briton said the well-run clubs were invariably privately owned and could thus obtain investment that would go into operations, facilities and stadiums making them sustainable and even profitable.

But in Kenya most clubs are registered as societies and thus cannot attract investment, he observed.

To truly turn professional, Taiwo reckoned clubs needed to be incorporated as limited companies so that they can attract financing. By necessity they will have corporate governance which will arrest the fundamental problems in the management of the Kenyan game – lack of accountability, corruption and ineptness.   

One suggestion I would like to offer the caretaker committee, and I am not holding brief for the KPL, is to let the top -flight league be run independently by a company.

The same case should apply to the National Super League.

You do not need to be a theoretical mathematician to conclude that returning the league in 2019 under the ambit of the Nick Mwendwa-led federation was an unmitigated disaster.

Firstly, the league lost its biggest sponsorship — the million dollars SuperSport television broadcast rights deal, that saw each club in the Premiership receiving yearly grants of Sh7.5 million each as at 2018.

By this year, had the deal remained intact, the 16 clubs would have received Sh125,970,000 in grants in addition to an incentive bonus totaling Sh24,862,500. 

In comparison, Premier League clubs got a one-off grant of Sh2 million from FKF in 2020.

Right now, the StarTimes broadcast rights deal is shrouded in secrecy. Clubs have confessed that they were forced by the bully federation to endorse a broadcast agreement whose details they were not aware of.

Before FKF took over the league, corporates were eager to own the naming rights. The league was that attractive!

As a matter of fact, KPL jumped on a bigger naming rights deal with SportPesa, shafting the previous owners of the rights, Tusker, who were very much interested in extending their association.

With television broadcast shaky, shirt sponsorships, once a regular feature in the KPL and a decent source of income for the clubs, simply dried up.

The upshot is Kenya’s topmost football club competition has alarmingly retrogressed.

Precipitously so, that one club, Sony Sugar, exited the league because of severe financial challenges, while most of the rest have limped on gamely, tottering on the brink of collapse.

The federation’s ill-advised policy of locking “unfriendly” journalists out of stadiums for being critical of the game also sent out the wrong message to would-be sponsors and partners.

It is a wonder Kenya’s elite football clubs still exist as growing concerns.

Yet clubs are the biggest stakeholders in our football. They are the ones that employ and develop the players that showcase their talent, attracting the audience that in turn attracts sponsorship.

When these players gain fame and fortune in a thriving football ecosystem, there will be no shortage of youngsters getting drawn to the game in droves.

So, go on caretaker committee, allow separate companies to run our two top leagues. The leagues should in turn work towards getting their members to professionalise.

Believe you, me, this talent that somebody said Kenya does not have, will be found flowing like a swollen Tana River.

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