The revolving managerial door at Vipers SC is arguably the busiest in Ugandan football.

The defending Uganda Premier League champions on Tuesday afternoon unveiled Brazilian coach Roberto Luiz Bianchi Pelliser to replace fellow countryman Roberto Oliveira who quit in late December, even though the club can barely be faulted for this latest episode of upheaval.

Plenty of coaches have come and gone, sometimes lasting only a handful of months before being shown the exit door either on a whim or for failing to hit the lofty standards set, something Bianchi will be wary of when the work starts in earnest.

Driven by a burning desire to establish Vipers among the traditional elite of Ugandan club football such as SC Villa, KCCA FC, and Express FC, club owner Lawrence Mulindwa has over the years stopped at nothing to ensure that Vipers buys the best players, hires the top coaches and plays at the best facilities in the land, and thus altered the fortunes of a struggling club once known as Bunamwaya to become a national behemoth.

The average Vipers head coach however lasts just over a year in the job on average, with no guarantees that silverware will be enough to keep the owner from pulling the trigger. The success has come in the form of multiple league titles among others, however, with all this success also came a lot of drama as the club has become synonymous with a chop-and-change strategy.

But as Vipers prepares for life under the stewardship of Bianch, let's rank all the previous of the Mulindwa era according to their performances.

Charles Katumba (January-April 2006)

Still named Bunamwaya FC, Mulindwa put his faith in former KCC defender, Charles Katumba, the man who had orchestrated their promotional campaign, to navigate through the uncharted waters of the club’s first-ever season in the top flight. 

Mulindwa would quickly regret that decision as Katumba’s side endured a tough start to the season, something many were quick to blame on the lack of reinforcements as the players who had helped secure promotion were found to be woefully out of their depth at this level. The results barely improved in the course of the season and Katumba was unsurprisingly relieved of his duties at the end of the season.

Verdict: Miss. While Katumba was given precious little to work with, his tactics left a lot to be desired.

Charles Ayiekoh (May-December 2006)

If Mulindwa’s desire was to appoint a head coach with tons of experience on the local scene, that was somewhat betrayed by Ayiekoh’s appointment. The young coach was fresh off deputising for Asuman Lubowa as Police FC romped to the league title.

With the promise of assembling a competitive side, he introduced a crop of young players poached from top sides like Robert Kimuli, Tony Odur, Yuda Mugalu, Ayub Kisalita, Boban Zirintuusa, Ronald Muganga who went on to become the backbone of the team for several years. But most crucially, the exciting football failed to match the results and he was shown the exit before the end of the season. Ayiekoh has gone on to have success in the Big League and on the university football scene having coached MUBS to the University Football League title in 2014 and 2015.

Verdict: Miss. While he’ll forever be credited for creating the spine that would anchor the club’s success in future years, Ayiekoh wasn’t cut out for this level.

Jackson Mayanja (January 2007-July 2008)

This time around, Mulindwa was seduced by the profile of Mayanja, a celebrated former Uganda Cranes star who became a household name patrolling the midfield at KCCA, a club whose storied history Mulindwa was envious of. There was only one problem.

Jackson Mayanja in the Vipers dugout in December 2007.

Mayanja’s glitzy career was yet to translate into success in the dugout and his tenure went exactly as expected. A run of poor results saw Mayanja’s relationship with the club deteriorate and he was indefinitely suspended by the club until the end of the season with the club languishing in 15th place. 

Verdict: Miss. Everything that could have gone wrong did, but Mayanja has done precious little over the years to suggest he could have been a success there.

Edward Golola (August 2008-December 2011)

After getting his fingers burned in his brief foray into the murky world of Ugandan football, Mulindwa changed tact and appointed little-known Edward Golola. He was coaching the St Mary’s Kitende Secondary School football team, a school owned by Mulindwa. In his first season in charge, Golola guided the team to a 4th-place finish, a massive 15 points behind champions URA. Having avoided the sack despite a less than satisfactory season, Golola guided a team that was overflowing with exciting talents like Caesar Okhuti, Tony Odur, Owen Kasule, William Kizito Luwaga, Sadam Juma, Mike Mutyaba, and Habib Kavuma to the club’s first-ever Uganda Premier League title, after beating record winners SC Villa 2-0 in Luzira. 

Golola gives instructions to Saddam Juma.

If that title win was supposed to be the springboard for a spell of dominance on the local football scene, Golola was horribly mistaken. Things quickly went downhill from here as a power struggle among the club’s top management threatened to tear the club apart.

Having finally qualified for the CAF Champions League, a lot was expected of the club on the continent but to the surprise of many, the team pulled out of the continental competition due to a lack of finances. Even more surprising, Mulindwa who was reportedly flirting with a career in politics, and at loggerheads with top officials, came out to distance himself from the club, saying it was just a club found in his constituency that he was funding by his own volition.

Golola confers with Luwaga Kizito during a league match in February 2009.

Staring at a bleak future, Mulindwa and the rowing club officials buried the hatchet before the start of the new season but that didn’t translate into results on the pitch and Golola paid the price with his job, being canned as the league took a break at the end of the 1st round in December with the defending league champions languishing in mid table. He promptly returned to his role with Kitende. 

Verdict: Hit. Surprised many by orchestrating the capture of Vipers’ first Uganda Premier League title and it’s a shame we never got to see what his team could achieve on the continent.

Ambrose Chukuma (2012-2013)

You’d be forgiven for having no recollection of Ambrose Chukuma’s spell as coach, and not even a quick Google search will bring up much of anything. Little was known about the Nigerian but having tasted success in the league, Mulindwa made his first foray into the world of foreign coaches in the season Bunamwaya was officially rebranded as Vipers, something that has come to define the club’s recent identity. An opening-day loss to Entebbe Young should have been a sign of things to come and while the quality of football was questionable at best, Vipers recovered to mount a credible title challenge. That would all fall apart at the start of January with Entebbe winning 2-0 at home to complete the double and see Vipers slump to just two wins in 10 games. With Vipers finishing 12 points behind champions KCCA, and fans baying for blood, Chukuma was sacked at the end of the season. Mulindwa has on more than one occasion forgotten to list Chukuma among the coaches he’s hired in the past. A fitting legacy? 

Verdict: Miss. It was simply a season to forget.

Edward Golola (2014-2015)

Chukuma’s disastrous reign forced Mulindwa to return to the drawing board and this meant showing faith in the exciting talents that were getting a shot with Vipers after graduating from the talent conveyor belt that Kitende had become. Some of the players who had made the jump included Faruk Miya, Deus Bukenya, Dan Birikwalira, Nicholas Wadada and Halid Lwaliwa. It only made sense that Mulindwa would once again turn to Golola who had overseen the youngsters’ rise through the ranks.

And what a decision that turned out to be. Vipers romped to the title in quite some fashion, winning an impressive 20 league games and losing just once all season having turned their Buikwe home ground into an impenetrable fortress. Bizarrely, at the end of the season, Golola was rewarded for his title-winning efforts by being demoted to the position of an assistant coach as the club opted to hire a more experienced coach with the CAF Champions League on the horizon. 

Verdict: Hit. Golola’s appointment while a stopgap in many ways, turned out to be an inspired one as once again, he built a squad that would set the club on the path to another period of sustained success.

George Nsimbe (August 2015-June 2016)

Having guided KCCA to three league titles in 2008, 2013 and 2014, George Nsimbe’s stock was very high when Tanzanian club Azam came calling. When the stint in the Tanzania Premier League didn’t go according to plan, Nsimbe landed at ambitious Saints FC that was inundated with financial troubles. He terminated his contract with eight months left and took over at Vipers after signing a two-year deal. “I have signed a two-year contract with Vipers and I am hoping to win the title with them,” Nsimbe would say at his unveiling.

George Nsimbe and his assistant and Golola during the CAF Champions league match against Enyimba.

That wouldn’t come to pass as KCCA pipped The Venoms to the title by just four points after the latter choked and failed to win any of their final four league matches. In the CAF Champions League, their fortunes weren’t any better, with Vipers being eliminated 2-1 on aggregate at the first hurdle by Nigeria’s Enyimba. As déjà vu would have it, Nsimbe was astonishingly demoted to assistant manager at the end of the season and he chose to stay and work under his replacement. 

Verdict: Miss. As the adage goes, Nsimbe found out that the grass is not always greener on the other side, and his spectacularly bad season left a dent in his

Abdallah Mubiru (July-December 2016) 

Fresh off a tumultuous spell at rivals KCCA that had culminated in his firing after a string of underwhelming results, and an embarrassing 3-0 loss at the hands of bitter rivals SC Villa in the Uganda Cup final, Vipers turned to Abdallah Mubiru who had scant experience as a head coach but enjoyed a great relationship with Mulindwa. The fact that Nsimbe, with all his clout, was among his assistants, only served as an inevitable recipe for conflict.

Mubiru (left) and Nsimbe during a training session at Kisubi.

Team selection became a point of contention among Mubiru and his backroom staff, especially the continued isolation of forward Tony Odur. For all his shortcomings, Mubiru was quick to implement a swashbuckling style of football but several inconsistent performances left fans calling for his head and he was gone by December, curiously after a 2-1 loss to SC Villa in the league.

Verdict: Miss. The football was eye-catching but Mubiru’s lack of experience was glaring at the time.

Richard Wasswa (January-March 2017)

What got Richard Wasswa the job, albeit on an interim basis, had a lot to do with the fact that he had been one of George Nsimbe’s assistants in the 2010 and 2015 title-winning seasons for Vipers. In the six matches he took charge of in three months, he managed to win three and draw the others. Wasswa’s final match in charge was a 2-1 win away to BUL. 

Verdict: He wasn’t in the job long enough and didn’t rock the boat.

Jorge Miguel da Costa Duarte (March 2017-July 2018)

“I am not here for a vacation. That’s why I don’t have my wife or children here but thousands of miles away,” were some of the first words to roll off Jorge Miguel da Costa Duarte’s tongue as he was unveiled as Vipers’ new coach in March. While his words might not have been as captivating as those of a certain fellow Portuguese coach who famously harped on about being ‘special’, Vipers had clearly signalled their intent with the capture of the UEFA B coaching license holder. The expectation was that he’d improve the side rather quickly despite his relative inexperience on the local scene, given that Golola was tapped to deputise him. 

Da Costa’s first match in charge was a memorable one as Vipers were welcoming Platinum Stars in the CAF Confederation Cup for the first-ever match to be played at the newly constructed St Mary’s Stadium at Kitende. Vipers won 1-0 courtesy of Milton Kariisa’s strike but a 3-1 loss away from home put paid to any continental ambitions. They finished third in the Uganda Premier League that season, with da Costa guiding the side to six wins out of the 11 matches they played, with two ending in draws, as well as three losses. 

Da Costa and his assistant Edward Golola celebrate a league win at St Mary's Stadium in June 2018, shortly before his departure.

However, it was in the following season that da Costa came into his own at Vipers as his side despite struggling for goals for much of the season — failing to score two or more goals in 17 of their 30 league matches — warded off Express’ spirited challenge to win the title. Notable results were a dramatic 3-2 win over KCCA and a 5-0 thrashing of Express in the penultimate match of the season to secure the title. Vipers’ season was somewhat ruined by the 1-0 defeat to KCCA in the Uganda Cup final in Bukedea to deny the club its first-ever domestic double. But barely two months after the league triumph, Da Costa was sacked following a disastrous CECAFA Kagame Cup campaign that saw Uganda’s representatives bow out at the quarterfinal stage to Kenya’s Gor Mahia. 

Verdict: Hit. Afforded time to actualise his vision for the club, the Portuguese held his own in his first full season in charge to claim the league title but multiple failures in cup competitions left a bitter taste.

Javier Martinez Espinoza (August-December 2018) 

Armed with a coaching history that cited experience in the Nicaraguan and Guatemalan leagues, Ugandans would be forgiven for having little faith in the Javier Martinez Espinoza experiment, given that Vipers harboured grand plans to make noise in the CAF Champions League.

The Mexican started his tenure like a house on fire, winning the first four matches of the season, but an alarming dip in form meant that Espinoza was constantly on the hook, but with continental engagements on the horizon, Vipers exercised a lot of patience. Reports that swirled about a fractured relationship with his dressing room, alienating senior players, and subsequent home and away defeats to Algerian side CS Constantine, which saw them fail to qualify for the group stages of the CAF Champions League were the final straw. His employment was quickly terminated after less than five months in charge. The Mexican left the club in second place in the Uganda Premier League, unbeaten, and five points adrift of leaders KCCA who had played two games more. 

Verdict: Miss. A tough start doomed his reign and the Mexican can make the case for needing more time to make an impact.

Michael Nam Ouma (January-July 2019)

Kenyan Michael Ouma was appointed as caretaker head coach until the end of the season, just 24 hours after Espinoza’s sacking. With more than half the season left to play, Ouma took charge of a squad that many agreed was punching way below its weight, but, even he couldn’t find the Midas touch to turn the season around.

His first assignment was to salvage whatever was left of Vipers’ continental campaign after dropping a tier to the CAF Confederation Cup play-offs where they were eliminated by Tunisia’s CS Sfaxien 3-0 on aggregate. In 19 league games, Vipers managed only nine wins to go with seven draws and three losses to finish the season seven points behind champions KCCA.  

Verdict: Miss. Took charge of a side already in freefall and did little to change fortunes

Edward Golola (July 2019-January 2020)

Third time’s a charm? Mulindwa definitely thought so when he once again tapped Golola to steady the ship. Armed with exciting emerging talents like Bobosi Byaruhanga and Karim Watambala, Golola’s side was firmly in the title hunt having won 13 of their first 18 matches, to go with two losses, when disaster struck.  Vipers suffered an embarrassing exit from the Uganda Cup in the round of 64 at the hands of Kajjansi United who featured in the 3rd tier of Ugandan football. Despite sitting atop the league standings with 42 points, four ahead of reigning champions KCCA in second place, Golola was given his marching orders in a move that left many observers dumbfounded. 

“The club would like to thank Golola and his team for their work during their time at Vipers SC and to wish them success in the future,” a club statement said in part. One wonders if the communications department didn’t just dust off and repurpose one of the many statements they’d authored in the aftermath of previous sackings. 

Verdict: Hit. Besides humiliation in the cup, he put Vipers on the path to league success in a tumultuous time.

Fred Kajoba (January 2020-May 2021) 

The hiring of Fred Kajoba probably confirmed what was being quietly whispered in football circles — that Vipers had acted in haste to get rid of Golola. Kajoba was attached to the national team, the Cranes, as a goalkeeping coach after successful spells at Bright Stars where he reached the Uganda Cup final in 2019 and went one better to win it with Simba in 2011. Kajoba took charge of seven matches before the COVID-19 pandemic led to the suspension and subsequent premature end to the season with Vipers being declared champions while KCCA were hot on their heels.

If Kajoba had been listening to all the chatter surrounding the nature of Vipers’ ‘boardroom’ victory, the next season offered a chance for him to prove the doubters wrong. His side was wildly inconsistent for much of the first half of the season but got into their groove in the New Year, but importantly, that meant that Vipers were always playing catchup as Express, URA and KCCA continued to rack up points. It wasn’t on-field issues however that would plague Kajoba, but rather, his other employer FUFA. He decided to step down after butting heads with the club's technical director, Charles Masembe, who told Kajoba to choose between Vipers and the Uganda Cranes. “I chose the national team because you cannot deny me a chance to serve my country," Kajoba said after throwing in the towel with just four games to end the season. 

Verdict: Miss. Given the chance to steer the ship after the previous season’s league win, Kajoba floundered.

Roberto Oliveira (August 2021-December 2022)

By this time, Vipers’ decision to shop overseas for new coaching talent came as no surprise. What was different this time around, is that Mulindwa chose someone who had a fair amount of experience coaching on the African continent. Brazilian Roberto Oliveira boasted a CV that listed top clubs from his native country such as Nacional, Fluminense and Atletico Miniero, Flamengo and Palmeiras among the clubs he played for, to go with coaching stints at Kenyan giants Gor Mahia, Rwanda’s Rayon Sport, Club Tunisie, and Angola’s Atletico Sport Aviacoa among others. 

His first assignment was the previous season’s Uganda Cup final against BUL FC which had been heavily rescheduled due to COVID-19 and that ended in an 8-1 hiding with striker Yunus Ssentamu grabbing four goals in Njeru. For many observers, Oliveira could take little credit for this victory as he’d only shown up when Vipers were in the final but he couldn’t care less, this was a perfect start and he could now go about stamping his identity on the club.

“Playing an attacking game is part of my identity. Vipers is a big club and big clubs don’t sit back but they attack,” Oliveira famously said during his unveiling, something that had Vipers fans dreaming of the much-vaunted Samba-flavoured football from South America. They didn’t take long to see signs of that as with virtually the same squad as the previous season, Oliveira turned Vipers into an attacking juggernaut, overwhelming teams with a constant barrage of attacks but the goals were not quite flowing despite racking up nine wins in the first 12 league matches. A 7-2 win over UPDF at Kitende seemed to break the shackles with goals flowing from Vipers’ forwards Yunus Sentamu, Cesar Manzoki and Milton Kariisa who finished the season with 14, 18, and 10 goals respectively. Vipers would underline their dominance that season by dropping points in only four other matches until the end of the season as they cantered to a fifth Uganda Premier League title with an astonishing 18-point gap to archrivals KCCA in 2nd place. What should have been an excellent domestic campaign was soured by the shock 3-1 loss to BUL in the Uganda Cup final in Masindi to scupper dreams of a maiden league and cup double.

With qualification for the CAF Champions League group stages being the ultimate goal Vipers had chased for almost a decade, Oliveira set about buttressing his squad for the rigours that lay ahead. In came some of the best local talent in Murshid Juuko, Marvin Youngman, Ashraf Mandela, Cromwell Rwothomio and Abdu Lumala. These were supplemented by forwards Osomba Omajondo and Darcy Mbaka from DR Congo as well as Nigerian Abubakar Lawal. Oliveira’s side however struggled for goals now that key attackers Manzoki and Bobosi Byaruhanga had departed in search of greener pastures but fortunately for Vipers, they managed to squeeze their way into the group stages of the CAF Champions League after squeaking past Congolese giants TP Mazembe on spot kicks.

Oliviera celebrates winning the Uganda Premier League title with his assistant Marcelo Cardoso.

With their next continental engagement not due for another four months, you’d have been forgiven for thinking that Vipers would batten down the hatches and address the poor league form that had characterized the start to the new season, something that was exacerbated by the painful lack of goals. But the turmoil is never too far away where Vipers are involved. Having won all their five matches in November without conceding a goal, and cutting the deficit to surprise early leaders BUL, Oliveira’s side stumbled through December, dropping points to sides like Busoga United, Express, and Gaddafi. Not great, and not terrible either, but just nine days after the end of the first round of the Uganda Premier League season, Oliveira departed the club only to be unveiled on Tuesday as the new coach of Tanzanian giants Simba. Reports indicate that Simba offered to more than triple the Brazilian’s wages, something that turned his head since Vipers were not in a position to match that. Curiously, Vipers will face Simba in Group C of the CAF Champions League alongside Morocco’s Raja Casablanca and Guinea’s Horoya and Oliveira left Vipers third in the league with 27 points, two behind leaders KCCA. "The club shall in the shortest time possible come out with a statement on the club’s technical bench leadership," Vipers said in a statement after his departure. We wait with bated breath.

Verdict: Hit. The Brazilian should be proud of his efforts to rebuild a potent squad, but most importantly, making history in the CAF Champions League.