Kenya: KPL Bow to Pressure

Nairobi Star (Nairobi)

Muigai Kiguru

21 May 2011

Kenya Premier League (KPL) finally bowed to pressure from the Harambee Stars Management Board and national head coach Zedekiah ‘Zico’ Otieno and postponed their May 28-29 fixtures.

The KPL governing council made the decision to reschedule the fixtures in a consultative meeting yesterday after a stand-off between the company and Football Kenya Limited threatened the national team’s interests.

KPL move will now give Zico the 10 days of training with all his local call ups as he had earlier demanded. Zico had threatened to resign if all the local players were not released by yesterday for training in readiness for their Africa Cup of Nations must-win return leg match in Luanda, Angola on June 4.

However, when contacted, Zico said he had not received official communication over the release of players and he will announce his stand on Monday

Speaking in a press briefing yesterday, KPL governing council chairman Chimsen Ndiema observed said matches will be rescheduled at the expense of the FKL Cup fixture. “After a lengthy consultation regarding this matter, the governing council has decided to reschedule the matches as requested by the various football stakeholders to give Harambee Stars sufficient training time ahead of this important encounter against Angola,” said Ndiema.

He said the matches will now be played during some of the FKL Cup match days. The tournament is yet to kick off. “We are not aware when the tournament will begin and we have therefore decided to take advantage of this non-elaborate schedule to fix these rescheduled match,” said George Odhiambo, the head of finance at the KPL committee. He said another such meeting will be conducted soon, comprising all sponsors and other institutions such as the Stadia Management Board and security providers, to give them the brief about the new arrangement since arrangements had already been done to cover for the matches as per the initial dates. “Everybody needs to know what has been discussed before reaching this conclusion as we seek to elongate our good relationship for the growth of our football,” added Ndiema.

However, the council said it is only doing this to ensure the Stars gets all the support they need and insisted that they have all along been following the FIFA statutes that requires clubs to release players five days to a major international assignment.

The council said the recent altercation concerning the rescheduling of matches was uncalled for.

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