inkandwords

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Football Tricks

I have borrowed the title from the forthcoming issue of Chimurenga Magazine. This is an apt title for the charade that passes off for the beautiful game in Africa. It is a fact that very few countries in this continent are without some nasty skeletons in their closets.

Football politics is now at the same level with national and international politics. Which is to say it is as dirty. It is not rare or strange to see a fully grown men anticking like toddlers. Each of the telling the other ‘’let take it outside if you are man enough’’. And they are all men enough according to what follows.

Fifa, the world governing body, isn’t also without its share of foibles, with very strange happenings going on in Laussane, its headquarters in Switzerland.

My country Kenya was banned from international football. The effect of this is that no team from Kenya can take part in any international competitions and worse, no player can move to another team whether in or outside the country. This is the worst part of it. Honest players are being pushed to poverty.

This is because of one or two or more punks at the federation got greedy. The mess that is Kenyan footie is solely and squarely the fault of some individuals dreaming about being councillors and MPs. It is a fact that almost all so called football administrators aspire to be elected politicians and see the football federation as their ticket to get a foot in. This is because of the attendant exposure that comes with managing the game. An emotive sport if there was one.

The breakaway league formed by a renegade group showed that football can in deed by run professionally and gain sponsorship from the corporates. Companies were falling over themselves for the chance to sponsor Munro and his group, even the hallowed Transparency international offered their support. But they just had to rejoin KFF.

I would think that they should stand their ground this time round coz deep down everyone knows that they are doing the right thing.

Intricacies, skulduggery and other bad meaning adjectives that describe football politics in Kenya and Africa, are indeed saddening but true.

Because of this the FA Premier League , La Liga and Serie A will always be the leagues watched in Africa

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