Why local community clubs need to wake up

One of the most effective weapons to enslave a person is to control the narrative or setting the agenda. In so doing, you also control the mindset.

We all know how colonialists used that tactic to great effect by pitting African against one another while disguising as though they are helping both of them. That’s the exact scenario majority of Uganda Premier League (UPL) clubs find themselves in as Fufa plays the colonialist role to weaken and divide them.

How else can you explain the fact that much as UPL teams form half of the Fufa core membership yet they have no voice in how they are regulated?

This is manifested in the hierarchal structure Moses Magogo created upon assuming the top Fufa office and leaves UPL teams, particularly the community clubs, on the outside when it comes to making key decisions. Fufa knows all too well what can happen if the clubs exercised their full potential.

So, the best way to heard them is to create a vague concept to ‘help’ professionalise them and preach it until it becomes part of the narrative. Every now and then Fufa comes up with a workshop on management, professionalism or sustenance but it cannot hold one on club rights. That’s a no-go area because it would open several loopholes.

So, Fufa will always create seminars for clubs to adopt the European football templates yet they don’t exist in our structures. Clubs in Europe have assured sources of revenue regardless of form or management yet here in Uganda, individuals dig in their pockets to sustain community clubs. Even established clubs here require someone to put in money without expecting anything in return because legacies don’t exist.

For instance, UPL teams like Tooro United or Onduparaka are less than 10 years in existence yet Fufa wants them to think like teams in Europe which have been around for more than 100 years. Surely, if that’s not coercion of the highest order, then it is the clubs that have failed to comprehend how they are under a spell.

This spell makes everyone fight for his own survival instead of grouping together for a common good. If clubs don’t wake up to smell the coffee, Fufa will continue to plan for them, pocket sponsorship money on their behalf and also push them to the limit.

In all this, Fufa continues to appease institutional clubs because it knows they don’t suffer financially. Just think of it, no single member of the UPL board understands what it means to pump money into a club in today’s environment, yet they are the same people to act as the go-between Fufa and the clubs.

Fufa will love a disorganised Express or Villa because it is easy to dangle a carrot at them as though you are supporting them yet Fufa is out to keep them in mediocre state. Community based clubs throw money in a no return pit to legitimise Fufa. All the commercial rights are controlled by Magogo in the name of football and FA. When will you harvest organic fruits of football while your being given GMO football by Fufa.

It’s high time clubs smell the coffee.

josephmbazzi@gmail.com

The author is Nyamityobora FC president.