The good days of Kenyan football are gone. It is a fact. The good days when we couldn’t wait for a Sofapaka versus AFC Leopards game are gone. The days heavy investment in Nakumatt FC would see the then second tier side size up against topflight opposition are gone. The now popular line that Kenyan football is in ICU rings right.While there’s genuine hope that one day we will get to the heights we enjoyed in years gone, there’s no hiding the fact that we need a brand of fresh, selfless, focused, business minded and ruthless leadership. For us to get there, it all has to start at the institutional level – club level.It is key that clubs realize there’s no amount of coercion coming from the national federation that will improve them if the changes they desire do not come from within the clubs themselves. This probably is a lesson our clubs have become accustomed to the hard way, if we track back from the day SuperSport touched base to the day the broadcaster left Kenya.To put this example in practice, I will throw in here a club I know so well – Ulinzi Stars. A club I have served as an employee and one that I will support to my last breath. While as a country, our football is in shambles, the way Ulinzi Stars is run is the perfect epitome of the failures we have from up there coming to the grassroot. My heart bleeds for Ulinzi Stars more though, and this is for the simple reason that Ulinzi Stars, at this time and age has the biggest advantage that all the other clubs in the country will struggle to match – funds. Ulinzi Stars shouldn’t be playing in this League.Waste of space— Nebs (@ItsKubasu) March 18, 2022 One football administrator, Ken Ochieng, the Zoo FC chairman posted recently on social media that “There is nothing in Kenyan football at the moment that is natural, realistic, organic or accidental. The spontaneity that accompanies the game is lost. Everything in it is completely premeditated, rehearsed. We are sadly watching football WWE. The game is dead.” How true! It is hard to raise enough points to argue against his sentiments, and a perfect example for this is a look at Ulinzi Stars with a specific focus on the management.To put it straight, the Ulinzi Stars leadership has failed the management test and has badly let down the club. Management is both a noun and a verb, depending on context but in this case the Ulinzi Stars top brass has failed on both fronts. On Social Media in recent weeks, Ulinzi Stars has been compared to an old maroon jalopy at a fuel station, the attendant even struggling to fuel it, let alone drive. As a brand, that is the impression fans across most walks have of Ulinzi Stars.A look at Ulinzi Stars past few seasons, you wonder if the leadership of this once great club has any strategy for survival in the coming years. Do they have a plan, timelines, deliverables and the requisite investment to set the club on the path to the desired destination? From a fan’s view, this is all debatable but looking at the progress of the team over the past few seasons I am tempted to say NO.In the scholarship of growth and development, you will have Ulinzi Stars as the perfect example of that social setup that grows but never develops. That the team will have very good players coming through the ranks and always looking like a great shot in the arm but at the end of the day there will be zero changes in the team’s fortunes. Technology that could help Kenyan team sports catapult to the topIn an organizational structure, if Ulinzi Stars was a project with well spelt timelines and a thoroughly spelt out Monitoring and Evaluation framework, it would probably have terminated operations in 2012, after winning the fourth league title and the KPL Top 8 Cup thereafter.That this club has sunk so low to a level of carelessness is really pitiful. The great Ulinzi Stars at this time and age, and funded by the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) and knowing too well the emergencies that can happen in a game of football can afford to send out individuals who are not just footballers but also officers of our esteemed military, to play without an equipped ambulance on standby says it all. It didn’t happen once, it happened twice! This is unacceptable and has put the club through untold shame and ridicule.It is this carelessness that today has Ulinzi Stars tottering somewhere above the relegation zone. It is unthinkable even to imagine Ulinzi Stars playing in the relegation playoffs. It is unfathomable that Ulinzi Stars can finish the league season in the bottom half. How can you explain that Ulinzi Stars, after 21 matches, has won just six matches? The team has actually lost more matches than it has won. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ulinzi Stars we are talking about here.Youth structures and scouting systemSix years ago, Ulinzi Stars won the KPL U20 Cup, and kudos to the management at the time because this was a result of great planning that focused way beyond just winning the title. Most of the players in that team were recruited into the military and a number have gone on to make a name at the club and even progressed to play for the national team. That was six years ago. Two years ago, another youth team associated with Ulinzi Stars won the Safaricom Chapa Dimba Laikipia edition and produced a number of good players who only needed nurturing. Where did these players end at?It may be simplistic to look at what ails Ulinzi Stars superficially; that they simply aren’t getting the results needed but that is not the crux of this problem. It is disappointing too that the players have been whipped mentally to imagine it is entirely their fault that the team is 14th in the league standings, 23 points behind the league leaders. Now the players are calling on fans more than the management, to keep supporting the team. The phrase ‘Itajipa tu’ (it will be alright), to mean results will just come, is going to age soon. It will not be alright unless the management invests in the human resource at this club and the facilities.Media department reduced to just sharing memes This mess falls squarely at the door of the management and it is down to their failure to spell out a strategy for the club. For example, today, Ulinzi Stars should be taking advantage of there being no broadcaster in the league to air their matches, but the club is reduced to a state it has to leech on live productions from other clubs yet it has the capacity.The business opportunity rendered inert by simply failing to invest in live broadcast and creation of exclusive content at this age says one thing; that the management is comfortable with status quo. An equipped media department will not only be key in beaming games live, it will also help the coaching team with the in-game stats. One of the biggest departments in any serious club should be the one charged with stats, and the world over, this has been proven important in bettering a team’s results.ReplicasThe fact that for the last four years Ulinzi Stars haven’t provided replicas for sale makes one wonder what this club desires, on the branding and marketing front. This is a club that can endear itself to a big percentage of the military population and enjoy partisan support throughout the country and still manage to fragment this support for better management and maximize the gains. All this support sits in camps terra-incognita. Untapped.Add all these to the civilian population that has a soft spot for the team and the club can be getting at least 5,000 fans attend matches and get an income from them while harnessing the potential of the online audiences as well for advertising opportunities, of course after hyping the game as it should. With a modest gate charge of Kshs 100 per home game, the club can easily bank Kshs 500,000 from every game, and improve on it with Match Day hospitality, these figures can shoot to even double. Fan base Zachary Gathu: Three promotions and a graceful growth out of the gameAnother key issue the Ulinzi Stars management needs to know as regards building a fan base, is that you can’t attract fans without a recognized home ground. It doesn’t help anyone that one day the team plays a home game in Thika, the following week in Kericho then in Nairobi before shifting to Narok. While it is understandable that our government hasn’t invested well in stadia, it won’t hurt just settling at one venue and trying to play most, if not all, home matches there. The 2019 East Africa Military Games held at Kasarani showed us just how much Ulinzi Stars is loved, majorly by soldiers, while the team also enjoyed great support from the civilian world. It would be sad to imagine that all the hype put in the run up to those games was just for the optics, knowing the who is who in the military would be attending. This hype should be part of planning ahead of each and every game. Filling up stands is what will get the civilian world to consider investing in the club on top of what KDF puts in. This investment is what will give the club funds to diversify; to get in ideas and more money to grow the club.Management has to up its game While this is a team drawing its leadership from the KDF, the management and all involved should be made aware of Ulinzi Stars’ crucial importance to Kenyan football. It is not by mistake that Ulinzi Stars is termed the best employer among Kenyan clubs; at this team you will never hear of players complaining of unpaid salaries, like is the norm among other clubs across Kenyan leagues. This is however not the only variable needed to improve the club’s fortunes.From a very informed point of view, I will say any change to what ails Ulinzi Stars rests with the management, and has to do with the negligence, callousness and high-handedness at the top of that chain.
