This is death of Ugandan soccer

Aug 28, 2003

NEVER before has football degenerated into a distasteful farce in Uganda. Okay, we’ve experienced shameful evenings like the one against Rwanda in June but few would have predicted Wednesday’s disgusting theatrics involving teams bizarrely referred to as the Nile Special Super League’s big boy

By Mark Namanya

NEVER before has football degenerated into a distasteful farce in Uganda. Okay, we’ve experienced shameful evenings like the one against Rwanda in June but few would have predicted Wednesday’s disgusting theatrics involving teams bizarrely referred to as the Nile Special Super League’s big boys.

If ever there was time to confirm the total demise of football in the country, it has to be now. Right now!

Villa and Express are largely responsible for the nuisance the super league has become and deserve to be relieved of their top-flight status. Neither side simply deserves it.

To be associated with either side, in any form, is a disgrace as of now.

This season’s championship, no doubt one of the most unspectacular, is sounding like the greatest contest with teams acting like it’s a matter of life and death — yes death!

Both sides are going for the most scandalous measures to outdo one another. Referees live in horror, players of the league’s lowly side are consistently tracked all over to be enticed by colleagues from the giant clubs and officials. The fans have joined in the circus, swarming matches of their rival to wreck havoc! It can’t get any worse.

It doesn’t help Villa’s aspirations for future glory in anyway. They will emerge champions of a farcical league, which loses meaning every day that passes, but will consistently be overwhelmed in the Africa Champions League they so love to compete in.

Sides as technically gifted as Angola’s AS Aviacao will continue tormenting the best Uganda has to offer.

So in years to come, the next generation will read that a midfielder by the name Hakim Magumba scored the all time record of seven goals in a match that ended 22-1! Your guess is as good as mine whether that is a prestigious way to create space in the archives.

Express have always pointed fingers everywhere except at themselves as Villa won title after title over the years.

Sensing that Villa was advantaged again, the Red Eagles found it best and appropriate to employ unorthodox means to keep within reach.

Rather than end matches, Express got involved in abandonment of games, benefiting in a loophole that gifted them points.

The efforts of the youth structures in Friends of Football, Nile Academy and Kampala Kids League are starting to look a pure waste of time.

It’s negating an upcoming player’s career, when after six or so years of development, he's recruited and then bears witness to activity of that nature.

And of course you've got to feel sorry for Property Masters whose initiative to reward all goal scorers, in a league devoid of the school of striking, was received with enthusiasm. No one would be inspired to carry on such a project.

Perhaps the most shocking fact about the whole mess is the openness with which both teams have undertaken to accomplish their crimes.

In the past, they've been allegations of bribery and witchcraft and that's not something strange in Ugandan football. The difference is that the organisation of such has been done very secretly. This time however, meetings to discuss evil have been publicly convened to plan the criterion for madness.

There can be no further confirmation about rot of our game. Football is precisely dead. And it will take time to resurrect.

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