Long-time fans and observers of sports on the African continent know that when you are a visiting team, from another African country, the hosts will deploy all manner of ‘extra-legal’ tactics to destabilize you and give the home team an added advantage before and during the game. In these times of the global pandemic, it seems that a new tactic has been added to these dark arts.
Last night, The last leg of the qualifiers for AfCoN 2021 (to be played in early 2022 in Cameroon, came through a conclusion in controversy. A critical, almost winner, takes all fixture between Sierra Leone and Benin had to be postponed, because of Benin’s refusal to take to the field without six of their key players whom, the Sierra Leonian Football Federation claimed had tested positive for covid-19.
The coaching carousel, at the helm of Harambee Stars’ men’s team continues to turn. Francis Kimanzi, who has coached the Harambee Stars on several different occasions, has abruptly stepped down as head coach. His replacement, Jacob ‘Ghost’ Mulee, another man, who has himself been Harambee Stars head coach on multiple different occasions, has been announced barely 24 hours later.
At this point in time there has been no official communication from either parties about why Francis Kimanzi and his two top assistants stepped down. Mr. Kimanzi’s latest stint at the head coach position begun in the aftermath of Kenya’s recent elimination at the group stages of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations. His last match was the recent 2-1 friendly match win against Zambia at Nyayo Stadium in Nairobi
Jacob ‘Ghost’ Mulee returns an old haunt, as Harambee Stars head coach.
Kenya are presently in the middle of the qualifying phase of the next Africa Cup of Nations, with 2 points out of a possible 6, with a home and away double header against Comoros, followed by return matches against Togo and Egypt still to be played.
The new (or returning) head coach Jacob ‘Ghost’ Mulee’s high point as national team coach, was in his maiden campaign at the helm, in which he led Kenya to their first AfCON finals appearance in 14 years (2004) and also presided over the team at those finals, in which Kenya won their first ever match at an AfCON finals, a consolation 3-0 win over Burkina Faso.
Subsequent spells in charge of the national team were much less fruitful, partially because of the backdrop of the wrangling between what was then the KFF (Kenya Football Federation) and FKL (Football Kenya Limited). ‘Ghost’ Mulee, a goalkeeper in his playing days, has also spent a considerable amount of time doing TV punditry for Kenya Premier League matches with, SuperSport, KTN News and Radio Jambo. He also had a successful stint as head coach of Tusker FC.
It’s almost time to celebrate the return of international football to Kenya. CAF has published a condensed schedule of remaining AfCon qualifiers, and preliminary World Cup Qualifiers.
The first of these matches, are the home and away ties against Comoros, in the 2022 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, the first of which will be on the 11th of November, behind closed doors in Nairobi. The second will be in Comoros a week later
So far FKF has managed to secure one friendly match (also behind closed doors), against Zambia, to be played in October, with various reports indicating that a second match might be in the works.
While the squad features the return of goalie Arnold Origi, after 5 years absence, Harambee Stars might have to do without captain Victor Wanyama, and on fire striker Michael ‘Engineer’ Olunga. Olunga is currently the leading scorer in the Japanese J-league. Both he and Wanyama are ruled out because of the strict COVID protocols involving people travelling in and out of the nations where they are currently based
Arnold Origi ends a 5-year exile from Harambee Stars (Source: Citizen Digital)
This is a Milestone for Kenyan football and massive relief fro the Nick Mwendwa FKF regime. They have been under fire from a media (probably still full of people loyal to the Ancien regime) over the poor state of the Harambee Stars.
I digress. This post is simply to pass my congratulations to the women who have shows that with some real support they can go very far, in what is still the very underdeveloped world of women’s football in Africa.
Early reactions I am seeing on the inter webs are mostly negative, and downright critical of the decision. The basis, which I totally understand is that Mr. Okumbi is neither glamorous, neither does he have a trophy cabinet full of shiny medals and titles that are the normal expectation when hiring a national team coach.
However I think that because of the challenges that Football in Kenya has, not just Harambee Stars recent run of poor qualifying outcomes, Stanley Okumbi is the kind of coach who is best suited for the job right now.
Stanley Okumbi, in his days as Mathare United Coach (Source: The Star Newspaper)
His predecessor Bobby Williamson, a great coach by any standards, had come off taking Uganda Cranes too multiple CECAFA titles, and Gor Mahia to much silverware.
He was the kind of coach who you would normally expect to get such an assignment. Lots of trophies, foreign passport, etc. Yet in his tenure in the Stars coaching job was hardly the roaring success one would expect.
FKF has yet to implement clear program for player development, coach development, friendly fixtures and other supplementary issues that the coaches of major football powers take for granted, when they take on the job of coaching whatever national team they are in charge of.
For Harambee Stars coaches on the other hand, the modus Operandi is get a ‘name recognized’ superman and hope the man can work miracles in spite of the total lack of co-operation or direction from the administration.
Failure to which, FKF blame that coach for everything wrong and repeat the process with some other superman coach, to somehow unilaterally work wonders.
Up till now it seems. By appointing someone whose background in football is from the most successful player development program in the country, the Mathare Youth Sports Association, FKF is signalling that they want to bring in people who know what it actually takes to holistically build a successful national team from the ground up.
Stanley Okumbi may not have a lot of trophies or medals, while guiding a seriously outgunned and inexperienced Mathare United team into mid table finishes in the Sport Pesa premier League. Yet I am sure that if you ask many of the players who have left Mathare United to greater glory with local, regional and international teams, many will tell you that his coaching is what laid the foundation for them to succeed as players.
I am not writing this post to play Devil’s advocate, I genuinely believe that Stanley Okumbi’s strengths are uniquely matched to the areas of weakness that Harambee Stars have as a team.
I also want to believe that as time goes on many people with similar youth football backgrounds, whether they are foreign or local, famous or not, will be added to coach our other national and youth teams, and that between them they can help FKF bring not just temporary success (winning the match or bahatishaing a small local trophy) but long term dominance of their opponents back to Harambee Stars.
In short Stanley Okumbi may not be the coach we want, he is the coach we need right now.
NIck Mwendwa basks in the glory of victory (Source: Daily Nation)
Standing at the head of the ‘Team Change’ slate that swept the board, winning majority of the FKF branch Chairmanships and NEC positions, Nick Mwendwa and his allies were granted a powerful mandate to implement change in an organization in desperate need to break from years of mediocrity and corruption.
Heck even the outgoing chair, himself elected on a platform of change, wound up covered in the graft which he was supposed to end.
So, what this blogger is wondering, is specifically what changes does team change intend to bring into FKF?
There is the unfinished business of the FKF-KPL standoff and what consequences it has on the teams, corporate sponsors and broadcast partners that have found themselves on either side of the standoff.
There is the continued neglect of women and youth football, and the absence of strategic direction of the men’s senior team. Harambee Stars remain the only team in the East Africa region who never seem to have anything lined up for FIFA sanctioned friendly match dates.
There is also the floundering, perhaps even ill advised efforts to bring the Africa Cup of Nations to the country. If Team change decide that that is somethign still worth pursuing then, that would mean there has to be an overhaul of the football infrastructure in Kenya.
Most importantly Mr. Mwendwa needs to show Kenyans that he has taken FKF chairman post because wants to work on building Kenyan fotball not just as a means to leverage himself into politics like so many of his predecessors.
All in all this blogger hopes that Team change can deliver on its promises to Kenyan football, and the FKF can become a beacon shining a light, not just for Kenyan football’s path to greatness, but to African football as a whole.
Bobby Williamson may be a great coach, but this is a terrible job offer.
On Sunday Afternoon on the 2nd of August 2014, Kenya Harambee Stars were due to face Lesotho needing to win by 2 clear goals, to stave off elimination from Africa Cup of Nations qualification at the preliminary round. They were unable to do so. The match ended goalless. The only way Harambee Stars will be at the 2015 Africa Cup of nations it seems, will be as ‘observers.’
Within minutes of the game, Football Kenya Federation had dismissed the team’s entire technical bench, and ‘disbanded’ the playing squad. Within days they had grabbed, the very well reputed Bobby Williamson, winner of 4 CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup trophies, and the man who ended Gor Mahia’s 18 year Premier League title drought, as Harambee Stars new head coach.
And so the merry-go-round called head coach of Harambee Stars continues to roll. Though there are likely promises that have been made to Mr. Williamson over Job security and a bunch of other things, this blogger doubts there will be much seriousness in keeping them.
Bobby Williamson , takes the hot seat (Source: in2eastafrica.net)
The man himself is clearly qualified for the job, but is the employer ready to deal with him long enough for his ability to make a difference? Does it matter how good the man in the head coach’s role is, if the rest of the structure (youth development and scouting, logistics and friendly matches planning etc) is virtually non-existent? Harambee Stars have been through an inordinate amount coaches over the past decade with only marginal variation in the outcomes on the pitch. As far as I believe the head coach’s position is hardly where the problems Harambee Stars have lie.
CV aside there not is much difference between this appointment, and that of the last man shown the door, Adel Amrouche. A big name, that’s hired on hype of recent success, to single-handedly be the magic pill that ends all of Harambee Stars woes. Sprinkle in some token local management and apparently you have a winning formula.
Granted Bobby Williamson, as I stated earlier in the post has an amazing resume, and reputation, the cynic in me reckons, that when push comes to shove his appointment is simply more window dressing on FKF’s part.
Without real substantive changes to the way FKF runs football in Kenya, then most likely outcome is, Bobby Williamson will struggle to get any more out of Harambee Stars than Adel Amrouche did.
At the end of the day either he will resign in a huff, or get made the scapegoat for all of Harambee Stars shortcomings, and some other high-profile ‘miracle worker’ will take over and the cycle will start again. That is how FKF rolls!
Right now I am in the middle of a coffee buzz. possibly the best thing in the world to inspire writing. Anyway, I read this article on the rise and fall of a certain famous, and storied German Football club and it got me thinking. How does the state of Kenya’s leading football clubs reflect on the state of Kenya’s Harambee Stars and the wider state of Kenyan football?
Many writings I’ve seen that address this issue of Kenyan football history will immediately rush to recall the glory days of the 198os as though they were some kind of footballing ‘garden of Eden’ from whence we are now forever banished. But why?
It is true that this period was one which Kenyan Soccer hit new heights. At least in the men’s game. Harambee Stars were finalists in the All Africa Games gold in 1987, three consecutive CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup trophies, and even qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations 1988 edition (a tournament which stood out becuase in that year it was for only 8 of Africa’s best football nations).
How did Kenya’s premier football clubs Gor Mahia and AFC Leopard do in that season? Very well actually. They were winning the CECAFA club championship with regularity, both made semifinals appearances in Continental Club competitions, with Gor Mahia winning the Mandela Cup in 1987. So how are these successes connected to one another?
Except for a brief period in the 1970s, the football academies that are the centre of the article I mentioned at the start of this piece, have not been a central part of Kenyan football clubs source talent. Indeed, aside from Mathare United, this bloggers is not aware of a top level football club that directly controls a football value chain, all the way from when their are in their early teens to when they finally graduate into the senior ranks as is common with the above mentioned football club as in the case in most of Europe.
Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards historically sourced their players from networks of football clubs in their ‘hinterlands’ and in today’s KPL, it is becoming customary for these two teams, together with Sofapaka, and Tusker FC, to cynically poach the best performing players of their rival clubs from the previous season, as though these teams were nothing more than academies for them.
But I digress, if you look closely at the past, you will notice, that an overwhelming majority of the players that were at the heart of those 1980s Gor Mahia, AFC Leopards, and from there Harambee Stars, had been seasoned (if you will) through working out in a series of Olympic football centres set up by a German coach by the name Bernard Zgoll in the 1970s. these centres used to scout regional teams, and bring in the boys they felt were going somewhere, and then expose them to the highest brand of technical training available in the land. these players would then transit to the big football clubs and from their into the history books.
When Mr Zgoll left, his Olympic centres died, and it was not until Mathare United became that upstart Nationwide league team, which insisted on embarrassing AFC Leopards at Moi Golden Cup Finals, did the concept of specialist football academies come back into the football mainstream in Kenya.
Mind you this article is not about fetishizing football academies in particular, because as I have stated earlier, AFC Leopards, and Gor Mahia, were quite good without directly controlling football academies and in any case, even with their football academy, nowadays Mathare United see to merely existing in the Kenya Premier League rather that trying to win any kind of accolades on the field.
The real loss, if you put the fancy football academies to one side, is the breakdown of the traditional, feeder clubs that community based teams used to partner with as talent identifiers on the ground, because to be honest, even these academies like JMJ and the like also need to get their raw talent from somewhere.
Right now, what amounts to a squad the best of Kenya’s locally based footballers plus filler, are contesting the CECAFA challenge Cup, against the best local talent from across the region. They might very well win. They were finalists in last year’s edition and we are hosting the event. However, how much refining have the gems in today’s Harambee Stars before hitting the big time, compared to the Harambee Stars squads of the 80s? Is it any wonder that the current Harambee Stars always seem to hit a brick wall when trying to turn the occasional big win, or surprise draw into a successful World cup qualification?
I’m not going to pretend that I have concrete answers to these things, but wouldn’t bringing a bit of that old 1980s preparation back into the Harambee Stars supply chain help, because simply shelling out for an expensive coach to make a scape goat out of when that brick wall gets hit isn’t working
Kenya’s Harambee stars open their 2013 CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup campaign against a strong Ethiopia at Nyayo stadium at 4:30pm (East African Time). The Harambee Stars have won the tournament, which is the oldest active international soccer tournament in Africa, 5 times overall with last time being in 2002 when the team was coached by a then fresh faced Jacob ‘Ghost’ Mulee. That was the same ghost Mulee who would lead Kenya to their only win at the finals of an Africa Cup of nations, in the 2004 edition, and has since won a number of trophies with Tusker FC, before settling into a life of TV punditry. That is a story for another day
Anyway this article is dedicated to looking at some of the things that have happened on and off the soccer pitch in Kenya since Harambee stars were last CECAFA Challenge Cup winners.
If he makes it to March next year, Adel Amrouche will become only the 2nd Harambee stars coach to finish a whole calendar year as national team head coach
Kenya has had three presidential elections, and two presidents (Mwai Kibaki, and Uhuru Kenyatta) elected to high office. In between there have been two constitutional referendums, one election crisis, a grand coalition government, and the beginning of two crimes against humanity cases at The Hague.
Shabana FC, Posta Rangers, Red Berets, and among other perennial top flight football teams have faded into oblivion, while only Sofapaka and have really established themselves in Kenya’s Premier League since then.
Three Kenyans (two of them brothers) have participated in the UEFA Champions League, one even has a winners’ medal. There is a Kenyan in a practice squad on an NFL franchise, and a Kenyan born cyclist has won the Tour de France
Kenya made it to the semi finals of the ICC Cricket World Cup once (in 2003), but has only won one game in the subsequent two editions in 2007 and 2011.
Kenya has made it to the semi finals of the Rugby Sevens World Cup twice? And become a core member of the Sevens World Series Circuit.
One David Rudisha became the first athlete to break an 800 metres World Record at the Olympics final. He also became the first man to run 800m sub 1:41, among other amazing things that happened in that race in the London 2012 Olympics.
These are just a few of the things that have happened in Kenya since Harambee stars last won the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup. Can they break the drought this round?
JUST IN: Word on the Street says Harambee Stars may coach may have already resigned over unpaid dues. Oh well…
After some tussling with the governing Confederation of East and Central African Football Associations, FKF were finally given clearance to host the former’s flagship CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup for 2013 . The tournament will run from the end of November, into early December.
Now the reason CECAFA have been so reluctant to kept Kenya host this tournament is because, the last time this happened in 2009 barely anybody showed up to watch the games. What with the then FKL’s virtually non-existent publicity for the event. Anyway, Kenya has another shot to show they can get fans excited about regional soccer and Harambee Stars have an opportunity to win a trophy for the first time since the early noughties. Best of luck to both.
NIck Mwendwa basks in the glory of victory (Source: Daily Nation)
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