AFC Leopards chairman Dan Shikanda has revealed how he almost ran away from the club back in 2019 barely two months after being elected as the club’s chair in the 2019 polls where he defeated former Chief Executive Officer Ronald Namai and lawyer Ben Musundi to clinch the post for a first time.According to Shikanda, financial challenges occasioned by the exit of their then gaming firm sponsor, who had agreed to give the club 60 million per year, just three weeks after he took over office from Dan Mule was the main reason that almost made him quit the coveted seat at the 12-time Kenyan champions.##EDITORS_CHOICE##At the time, Shikanda reveals how his 100 million budget had been rendered almost irrelevant after the withdrawal of the 60 million that he was sure of getting from the gaming firm landed a deathly blow to his first tenure in office.“The (just concluded) 2021/2022 season was pretty good but the other two seasons (19/20 and 20/21) were chaotic. I almost ran away but I thank God I was resilient enough to make sure that I stick around and try to build something.When I was elected in the 2019/2020 season, Sportpesa left three weeks after I came to office. That meant losing 60 million of the budget. My total budget was 100 million and the only actual money in that budget was that 60 million from the sponsor. The fourty was supposed to come from God knows where,” the former player turned official said in The Funny, Real and Raw Football Show.SportPesa closes shop in #Kenya, rendering about 400 of their employers jobless, cites harsh tax regimes as reasonThis shut down will affect sponsorship deals it had in the countries sports. it had deals with Gor Mahia, AFC Leopards, KY Premier League & KY Football Federation— Atulinda Allan🇺🇬 (@Atulinda_Allan) October 3, 2019 “The team was already in Mumias for preseason and we had just received 11 milllion before we lost the sponsorship. It was a really tough moment. It was the time I realized that a month is shorter than a week because the players are all depending on you to pay their salaries,” he added.The former Gor Mahia player also revealed that some of his Executive members deserted the club leaving him with all the burden of steering the club.##NAJAVA_MECA_6533080##“My nightmare was having to run this team without anything. On paper, it is one of the biggest clubs in the country but with no money yet you need to pay for things. Sometimes raising 10,000 shillings to pay for the training pitch was impossible. Some of my National Executive Members took off and I had to knock on all the doors, including State House, to ensure the team does not crash in my hands,” he said.
