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Victor Majid has become the latest Kenyan to move to the Zambian Super League in the recently concluded mid-season transfer window.
His move to Prison Leopards could easily pass as an ordinary transfer of a Kenyan footballer to the ZSL. However, a closer look at this transfer tells a different story.
It does not tell the tale of a footballer heading for greener pastures like David Owino or Jesse Were who left Gor Mahia and Tusker respectively for Zambian giants Zesco United. Neither is it a case of a player seeking a different challenge like Duncan Ochieng’ who left AFC Leopards in search of silverware at Nkana.
“Majid is a top player but the priority here is to help the club avoid relegation,” his agent Alukwe Mutanda was quoted as saying in sections of the media following the move.
Majid’s move lends credence to the fact that the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) is slowly losing its allure. That Majid, whose immediate former club Leopards is one of the best financed teams in the local topflight, fancied a move to a bottom-placed team in the Zambian league, speaks volumes on how the quality of the KPL has plummeted in recent times. Kenya is no longer the dream destination for East African footballers and by extension top talents in Africa.
As recent as June 2014, Sofapaka acquired the services of Fiston Abdulrazak. Gor Mahia had also roped in Ugandan duo of Godfrey Walusimbi and Godfrey Kizito January the same year.
A year later, K’Ogalo signed up Rwandese international Meddie Kagere and their nemesis Leopards snapped up Nigerian Austin Ikenna. All these players have since left and local clubs have continued to struggle to retain their best players.
Go-slows, unpaid salaries and bonuses have become the order of the day in Kenyan football.
Gone are the days when Kagere’s back-heel goal (against Nakuru AllStars) or Were’s hatrick of hatricks (in 2015) could make headlines across the continent. But where did the rain start beating us?
The current situation can be blamed on a raft of changes in composition and organisation of the top-tier football league since 2017.
Indeed 2017 is a year that local football stakeholders in the country would quickly want to forget. After riding on a wind of change, Nick Mwendwa took over the leadership of the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) in February 2016.
He inherited a federation that had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the KPL over the composition of the league in September the previous year. Still new in office, FKF chose to shelve plans for expansion of the KPL until end of the 2016 campaign.
The tussle for control of the top-tier league began in late 2016 and continued into the new year, with FKF pushing for an 18-team league while KPL maintained that the number of teams should remain at 16.
After a series of Joint Executive Committee (JEC) meetings, the infamous club licensing and court hearings, KPL bulged on the premise that FKF would cater for the additional costs of the expanded league as stipulated in the Sports Disputes Tribunal (SDT) ruling.
SuperSport withdrew in a huff
The development did not go down well with broadcast sponsors SuperSport who unilaterally terminated their contract with KPL in April 2017.
The South Africa-based pay TV company, in a statement, questioned the autonomy of the KPL in as far as management of the top-tier league was concerned and took off citing blatant breach of the improved five-year deal they had signed in 2014.
“You warranted to us contractually, that KPL is the only body recognised by Fifa to run, administer, and be responsible for the administration of professional club football in Kenya, which warranty is directly contradicted by the relevant SDT ruling and the views of Fifa,” the statement, signed by SuperSport’s legal advisor Philip Seleke, read in part.
The departure of SuperSport meant that clubs would no longer benefit from a combined annual grant of Sh9.6 million from the broadcaster as well as title sponsors SportPesa.
“Kenyan football is poorer today. The legal and sporting consequences are grave.Mwendwa should take the blame for all this, he is the one who pushed us to have 18 teams in the league this season, despite our contract (with SuperSport) stating otherwise,” KPL chairman Ambrose Rachier, who doubles up as Gor Mahia chairman, said at the time.
On December 31, SportPesa made good its threat to withdraw from all local sports sponsorships in protest at increased taxation on gaming, thus leaving KPL clubs in a limbo.
With many clubs grappling with financial issues, KPL threw a spanner in the works by entering into a three-year deal with MediaPro for production of its matches on free to air TV in March last year.
Interestingly, the MediaPro deal was preferred ahead of a lucrative five-year deal from Radio Africa worth an average of Sh189 million annually that was to run until the 2022 season.
The league matches continued without a title sponsor and clubs operated on tight budgets since the deal with MediaPro did not yield any grants.
A reprieve came in April when SportPesa rescinded its decision to cut sponsorships and returned as title sponsors in a deal worth Sh80 million per year, Sh13million less than the initial deal.
That translates to an annual grant of Sh3.6 million per club, more than 60 per cent less than what clubs got when SuperSport were on board.
Just as KPL clubs had begun mustering how to make do with the reduced grants, another bombshell was dropped. FKF ordered that the league had to end in October in preparation for a transitional season that was to start in December.
This was after Confederation of African Football (Caf) decided to change the periodicity of its inter-club competitions from 2019 onwards.
FKF failed to consider the welfare of KPL clubs and players when changing the plan for a transition to the Fifa calendar from six years to only six months.
This abrupt change of plan has had a strong and negative impact on KPL club budgets and players as it increased their matches and costs in 2019 by 50 per cent. Instead of 34 KPL matches in a normal season, KPL clubs must now play 34 KPL matches in only six months (December-May) in the 2018/19 season plus 17 more KPL matches in the first half of the new 2019/20 season).
“FKF only informed us of Caf’s directive by March. We had worked on something that was comfortable for the clubs the previous year. We wrote to FKF who said it was not possible (to adopt the six-year plan) so we had no option but to oblige,” KPL CEO Jack Oguda told Nation Sport.
“Caf issued a directive that they needed to know the league champion and the cup winner by end of May for them to participate in their club competitions so we told KPL to come up with a solution.
KPL decided to introduce midweek fixtures so as to end the season within six months. On our side, we decided to start the cup competition from Round 32 as opposed to Round 64,” said FKF Communication Manager Barry Otieno in a quick rejoinder.
Clubs are now bearing the brunt of that decision that has forced them to walk the tight rope that is paying salaries on time or catering for logistics that comes with honouring matches.
Community clubs have been the biggest victims. Others like Mount Kenya United have gone for up to six months without pay and recently issued a walkover to Gor Mahia.
“We have been taken for a ride. Ever since coach (Melis) Medo came back he has sidelined the chairman and other senior team officials and is always in communication with the patron (Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria).
Before matches, he always threatens that he will chase us and normally urges us to play in order to market ourselves. We are often given Sh1,000 after games. How can you market yourself in such conditions yet you are not even given fare to attend training?” a Mount Kenya United player, who sought anonymity, told Nation Sport.
“After every game we are always told our salary will be paid before our next match. So we have decided enough is enough. It's been six months without salary and for players who were here last season it's now 10 months,” he added.
“Recently (on April 3) when we travelled to Mombasa to play Bandari (and lost 3-2), we were kicked out of our hotel. We had to hang around town before kick-off. After the match, we boarded the bus and only got to Nairobi the next day at 6am. Every player was given Sh100 as fare to go home. During the whole journey, we had no stoppages to buy food,” the player said of his experience at the club formerly known as Nakumatt.
Institutional clubs have not been spared either. They have been forced to stretch their budgets into the next financial year with recurrent expenses now at an all-time high.
“In the past we used to budget for three-day training allowances but now we have to budget for seven days since the players are always in training. Lack of stadiums in Nairobi also means that we are paying more per diem this season. On average, we spend close to Sh400,000 for any game we play outside Nairobi. It could even be higher, we are just lucky that we have a team bus that caters for transport costs,” offered Posta Rangers chairman John Tonui.
“It’s terrible since most clubs have been forced to dig deeper into their pockets to meet the cost of featuring in the league. The frequency of expenses is higher than that of cash flows to the mother company. This leaves the club in a tricky situation and affects the performance of the team. We have tried to talk to the players to make them understand,” said Sony Sugar CEO Boniface Odhiambo.
While local clubs struggle with a punishing schedule that has drained their accounts to the last coin, their counterparts in other transitioning leagues, notably Zambia and Nigeria, are enjoying a smooth transition with a more reasonable schedule of matches.
In Nigeria, the Professional Football league was divided into two groups of 12 clubs each – Group A and Group B. At the end of the season, the top three sides from the two groups will face off in the Super Six play-off that will be played on round-robin format.
The winning team will be crowned the league champion and will play in Caf Champions League. The second-placed team will also play in the Champions League while the third-placed team will join the winner of the domestic cup in the Confederation Cup.
In Zambia, the 20-team ZSL was split into two streams with 10 clubs each - Stream ‘A’ and Stream ‘B’. At the end of the season, winners from the two streams will not only qualify for next season’s Champions League but will also contend for the league title in a play-off.
The runners-up in both streams will automatically qualify for the Confederations Cup.
As Rachier remarked two years ago, Kenyan football is indeed poorer. The consequences of the FKF vs KPL tussle over control of the top-tier league have been more than grave.
The once lucrative KPL is on its knees, the lower tiers of Kenyan football are in deplorable state.
Who will save Kenyan football?
