We need a Hail Mary Pass

For the purposes of this one, I feel I need to explain something for those of us not well versed in the sport of soccer. A crash course of sorts if you like. Unlike Captain Jack Sparrow, I will not point names and name any fingers towards women on this. Moving on, soccer is a sport played on a roughly rectangular pitch by two opposing teams, each consisting of eleven players. The two upright posts with a crossbar running over them is the goal. Teams gain advantage by putting the ball past the usually bored looking guy between said posts. This is called scoring a goal. The team with the most number of goals is the winner at the end of ninety minutes, barring any special circumstances. I will not go into the rules, or the technicalities of the coaching staff, substitutions, tournament rules and such like, before I confuse you more and you end up drifting to the fascinating topic of nail art.

Now that you have basic knowledge of what football is, I can finally get what is eating me up inside out of my system. Yesterday, I braved the rain and the biting cold to avail myself and watch the Harambee stars match. So I poured myself a cup of hot kahawa, picked my maasai shuka, and sat my behind infront of the television, thank God for supersport. To the heart of the matter….My expectations were not lofty, but I half hoped that this being the LG Cup, and our opponents being the unstable country of the Sudan, the least they could do, was gift us with the chance to sing the victory song. But this is the team, whose one time coach after losing an away match to Guinea, said that his team did not want to embarrass the host nation, by beating them infront of their prime minister. What kind of bullshit excuse is that?! To worsen things, they still did not immediately can this joker called Muhidin!

We have lost to teams like Somalia!! Who loses to a team in a country with no visible governing structure?! Does Somalia even have a football federation? Personally, I have never heard of the Somali Football anything! I highly suspect that the Somali national team is picked the day before travel, and is comprised of riffraff off the streets of Mogadishu. The criterion for making the team is probably your ability to evade land mines, and catch live grenades with the instep. I cannot confirm this, but am thinking that for a country without an established form of governance for anything, we should be able to Afghanistan them to kingdom come!

Yesterday was a lackluster display of mediocre football, that pointed out to everyone, even the blind,that something is to be done. There was no creativity in the team, no one who can step up when the chips are down and produce a villa moment (a moment of individual brilliance). Zico (national team coach) has absolutely no idea on what his first team is for any match. He is still like a mad scientist with chemicals in a lab…and just like a mad scientist; the experimental mixtures he tries out tend to blow up on everyone. Someone should tell him to watch the resident evil franchise of movies….that is the same way zombies were born!! Players yesterday looked like lost sheep, with no one to shepherd. There was no leadership In the team. True, we held all the possession, but that was only because the Nile reptilians were content to defend their slim lead. Had they pressed their advantage, the story would have been very different.

This is the kind of incompetence in the running sport that gives Kenyan football a bad name. We are renowned for our proficiency in the art of stone throwing and referee intimidation thanks to our Gor Mahia brothers, botched elections marred by violence and irregularity coutersy Ingwe, improperly executed contractual agreements-just ask Rangers what Postal corporation did to them. No one is held accountable for anything, including debacles like what happened yesterday. I wish I could care enough to want to tear my hair out, but honestly, I am at that point in a relationship when there is nothing surprising any more. My relationship with Kenyan football is at that point where anything else is looking like a better deal. I have even started looking into the bowels of professional sport, scouting activities like cricket and golf. When you are in a relationship where even your house help who walks with a limp and is more than a little cross eyed starts looking like a better deal, its time to cut your loses and move on. We either need a Hail Mary pass, or an intervention by a higher power.