Thursday 9 September 2010

Harambee Stars Woes, are we surprised?

It baffles the way Kenyan football fans are quick to put blame on one or the other for the team's poor performance in recent times. Are we surprised by that? Not from our brief here.
It is always going to be tricky affair translating good league fixture games to national team performances. That FKL has always been joking when it comes to the national team is something that needs to end. How can a team train for 4 days and then leave on the actual day to play a fixture which is more than 6 hours away? And you expected to win?
You must also have read The Daily Nation's- Macharia Gaitho's story about our team draping in all sorts of colours thus no consistency there too!
Harambee Stars A.Makacha  in a Weird colour - (Courtesy of www.kenyafootball.com

Not even the presence of famed duo of MacDonald Mariga and Dennis Oliech could save the blushes the team suffered. What is amusing is that the technical bench found it fair to play Oliech as the captain for the day ( though Robert Mambo remains the captain) even though he hadn't trained with the team. If players decided to have a go-slow on the pitch and thus lose the game, well they did just that and now complicate their qualification chances in a group featuring Angola, Uganda and Guinea-Bissau (who were labelled the under-dogs). The next fixture has Kenya facing Uganda in a month's time (Oct 8th at Kasarani)...should be an interesting fixture...
But if we are to make a difference in the qualifications, the rot starts from the top and needs to be pruned soonest possible. No need to blame the Twahirs, Oliechs, or other excuses that we've sought. Or else we shall remain non-starters on the continental-stage!

2 comments:

Mike Kwambo said...

Logistics ahead of the Harambee Stars match against Guinea Bissau were shoddy, amateur to say the least. Heaping the blame on Oliech and Mariga is an attempt by the FKL office to claim that their preparations were above board. This is utter nonsense. The boys were training in the cool climate of Karen to go and play in Mombasa like conditions?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that playing in Bissau would entail playing in humid conditions. Arriving on the day of the game after crossing several time zones and expecting them to win was just asking too much of the Stars. Logistics...Logistics...Logistics...We forget that the foreign based players bought their own tickets because FKL were asleep. They knew of this game months ago and did nothing. Now they bungle and heap the blame on two players. Come on FKL, you can't fool us.

SportsKenya said...

Couldn't have said it better!