With Nyayo given the all-clear, onus is on Gor to deliver in CAF assignments

One of the best piece of news I got to read in this season when Kenya’s football is filled with gloom was that Confederation of African Football (CAF) has cleared our beloved Gor Mahia to host  the Republic of the Congo’s AS Otoho d’Oyo in their return leg of the CAF Confederation Cup play-offs at Nyayo National Stadium.

This means that we will not have to travel all the way to Dar es Salaam as had earlier been planned following a ban on Kenyan stadiums on hosting the such international matches.

So much for a country whose ruling class promised us half a dozen or so of international standards stadia when they were busy looking for our votes.

Be that as it may, I am elated and I hope that CAF will move one step further and allow some percentage of fans inside the stadium.

The return leg is slated for December 5, and this day is very emotional for those of us who have followed K’Ogalo over the years.

As I have written here before, I still remember that Saturday, December 5 1987 when Gor Mahia lifted the Nelson Mandela Cup at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, becoming the first team from these shores to bag a continental cup.

The memories of the ensuing raucous celebrations, song and dance that reverberated from MISC through the city centre to the four winds of the earth are the ones that I will carry with me to the day I will breathe my last. It is my hope and prayer that the class of 2021 will reenact what their predecessors did in 1987. It has been a long wait, lads!

Still on the continental assignment, I was pleased by the decision of the technical bench to arrange friendlies for the boys as they await the first leg match next weekend away in Brazzaville.

With the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) Premier League in abeyance following the welcome decision by Sports Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohammed to disband FKF and appoint a caretaker committee, this was the only avenue left to check the players’ fitness levels.

Away from the pitch, there was the fundraiser held in the week where the club netted slightly less than Sh4 million out of the targeted Sh15 million. The effort, although welcome, is not a good model to run a club.

Like the lone prophet shouting in the wilderness, I will never tire to remind the club’s management that they need to think out of the box and come up with modern funding models.

Fundraising is so 17th Century whereas we are living in a century of fintech which we can make use of.

I am sure the management has had a million and one proposals on how to run the club effectively so that we can be at par with our peers like Simba of Tanzania, Esperance of Tunisia and Zamalek of Egypt just to mention but a few.

Those other clubs have prudent and effective revenue streams and far be it removed from their managements to walk around, begging hat in hand seeking to bail their clubs out. 

Just an example I stumbled upon on social media from a fan Mark John Kiyaka commenting on the fundraiser:

This is the same method used by the management to assist the club in its mission in the seventies and eighties. 

Has the mentality of Gor Mahia management not advanced since then or where are we missing it? Can’t the current management realise that, just by changing the structure of the club a little bit and everyone will enjoy football while earning some return on investment from the club at the same time?

Of course, this will call for better accountability in the running of the affairs of the club. Conversely, the management will be earning legitimately more income for their services than what they maybe sneaking out with such mediocre management style.”