10 septembre 2006
Even soccer is politics in Kenya
I bet you’ve never heard of the Harambee Stars, the Kenyan national soccer team. That’s because they have never been on the international soccer map. Never won any international competition, never participated in the World Cup.
That’s a shame, because as the last World Cup has shown, Kenyans love soccer (or “football”, as they say). A popular Kenyan rap group has even made a song entitled “Arsenal”, to celebrate their favorite club.
Well a few weeks ago, there was renewed hope for soccer fans in Kenya – hope that their own national team could maybe reach new heights, and this, thanks to famous but retired French World champion Bernard Lama.
Last August, Lama announced that he had accepted the Harambee Stars’ offer to become their new coach, and that he 
had great ambitions for the team, the first one being a qualification to the 2008 Africa Cup in Ghana.
This was to be his first posting as a coach, after having been a talented goal keeper for the French national team for years. He had picked Kenya, he had said, “because it is a beautiful country and there’s everything to be done. This is a true challenge.”
On September 2nd, Andrew and I went to cover Kenya’s first qualification match against Eritrea, an inexperienced team that had evolved below the radar and wasn’t considered as a threat by anyone.
The match was going to start at 3pm. They never start much later here, because night falls at 6:30pm and the stadium lights haven’t been working for years. We got there just in time to see Lama make his entry, cheered by an excited crowd, which barely filled half of the stands.
Lama looked serious and focused. He had called several players evolving in international clubs to make up the new national team, but he was still trying them out.
Interestingly for me, I learnt that about 70% of the players were from the Luo tribe. In Kenya, soccer, as politics, is dominated by tribal allegiances. Actually, soccer IS politics in Kenya, and soccer is and has been forever a Luo thing. In the stands, I realized that many supporters were not cheering for their team, but singing political slogans. They were quite excited as well, and I have to say, not looking very friendly.
The match started, and very quickly became quite embarrassing to watch. The Harambee Stars were playing a messy, clumsy game, missing all the occasions. Lama was getting frustrated, sometimes even giving a sarcastic smile to the cameras as a sign of hopelessness, and angrily shouting “Allez, allez, allez!!” to his team (let’s hope they had all been given a crash course in French soccer vocabulary).
The public was getting frustrated too. When the Eritrean coach received a red card for throwing a chair on the pitch (to this day, I still don’t know why he did that, the guy was winning), the crowd started to boo him and to throw bottles at him. The coach was ordered to leave the stadium but he would have had to face the angry spectators so he stayed there, not knowing what to do. Lama went to him, hold him by the shoulders and walked with him towards the exit to protect him from the bottles. Wow, I thought, this guy is tough.
Andrew and I went to walk around the stands to get some reactions and voxpops. All the supporters had faith in Lama, some of them even hoping that he could “clean up” Kenyan soccer. I started to think that the expectations were really high for one single man who was just discovering Kenya and its complexities.
The match ended on a shameful 2-1 for Eritrea. Lama proceeded towards the exit, tailed by all the journalists: “Mr Lama, your reaction to this match? What happened?”. “Give me a few minutes, he said, I’ll speak to your after the debrief with the team”. We left him alone and just followed him quietly. As we were getting to the exit, we were welcomed by more bottle throwing and realized that… the supporters were attacking THEIR OWN TEAM. Glass bottles were crashing all around me. The team went back to the pitch. A few of us stayed close to Lama, hesitating for a few minutes. Should we rush inside? Should we stay on the pitch with the team until the stands were cleared?
Lama was visibly annoyed, but he didn’t flinch and kept walking. The bottles all missed him. Andrew was following him closely with my camera (MY camera. He’d better be careful). I followed as well.
Inside, Lama was nervously smoking a cigarette. A French guy, who I think was working for France Football, was yelling at the police that they were supposed to be protecting the players.
When Lama was finally ready for an interview, I asked him what he thought of the Kenyan public.
- I hate that, I hate this attitude. There's no respect, and that's something that needs to change.
- We've spoken to someof the supporters in the stands, they count on you to reform Kenya's soccer administration. What do you say to that?
- Ah, well, the thing is you can't do this alone. I can help, I can give guidance, I can do a lot, but I'm on my own here, and Kenya has to take care of its own soccer. This country has to take responsibility for itself.
After the interview, I talked to him privately for a little while, and he told me how limited he was in his task. He had asked for laptops so that his assistant coach and his staff could work, but there was no money for that. He wanted to organize friendly games so that the team could practice, but there was no money for that either. At the same time, the Kenyan Football Federation hadn’t allocated him a house yet, so he was still staying in a hotel at 150 dollars the night. This made no sense to him.
Andrew and I looked at each other with the same thought: he’s not going to last long.
And indeed he didn’t. The next day Lama held a presser to reveal that he hadn’t even signed a contract yet. He had been working for free for a month. Now he was not taking this anymore, and he wouldn’t do anything until he had a contract. He went back to France without one. From there he launched another appeal to the Federation, that was left unanswered. Lama finally announced that he was quitting, probably wondering why Kenyan soccer was shooting itself in the foot like that.
