First, allow me to grudgingly congratulate Yanga SC for making their first ever CAF Confederation Cup final. Yanga beat South African strugglers Marumo Gallants 4-1 on aggregate on Wednesday to sail through to the two-legged final set for the end of May and early June. CAFCC: Gallant Yanga silence Marumo to advance to the finalIt’s no mean feat for a club from Sub Saharan Africa, and East Africa for that matter, to scale such heights in a competition known to be dominated by North Africans, like all others under CAF.To hard-core Simba SC, Yanga’s arch rivals, and Gor Mahia fans, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, yet, there’s only one known reward for proper planning and hard work, success. Yanga has grown in leaps and bounds, and without a doubt deserves this moment of glory. You can’t take it away from them.Should they win the second tier continental club championship against USM Alger of Algeria, then Yanga, or the Wananchi as they are fondly referred to, will become the first Tanzanian club to do so.What more, they will shutter Gor Mahia’s 36-year-old record of being the only East African club to have won a continental trophy. CAF CC: Nabbi out to upset USM after guiding Yanga to final##NAJAVA_MECA_7261504##K’Ogalo as Gor Mahia is nicknamed, bagged the 1987 African Cup Winners’ Cup, then known as Mandela Cup, a bragging right they’ve worn with pride and cherished for over three decades, but which is now under real danger.To rub salt on the wound, up to very recently, Yanga was no match for the record 19-time Kenyan champions. In the 2018 Confederation Cup group stage, K’Ogalo hammered them 7-2 on aggregate. Yet, a series of structural and managerial moves a few years later, which saw them bring on board a strategic partner, has had Yanga morph into a local and continental juggernaut.Meanwhile, sadly, Gor Mahia has regressed over the same period and is still steeped in maladministration and backwardness. The most you hear about the fallen giants lately are cases of players taking them to FIFA over contractual breaches. However, Gor Mahia is just a reflection of how bad our football has become. Juxtaposed to Tanzania’s Ligi Kuu, the Football Kenya Federation Premier League (FKFPL) is a far cry of what a proper league should look like. Since 2016 when Supersport, the South Africa-based pay television behemoth, unceremoniously left the scene, FKFPL has operated without a broadcaster. On the other hand, Ligi Kuu has enjoyed world class coverage courtesy of Azam TV.Azam recently gave Kenyans a taste of what they are capable of in terms of marketing a league and quality production when they acquired media rights for the Mashemeji Derby. To say the least, they left many fans of Kenyan football, both local and abroad, who managed to catch the games using Azam TV mobile app, yearning for a permanent deal.
