USL Versus Fufa – It’s All About Money

25 June 2011

IT’S happened to just about everyone of us. What separates us is how we react to it. You begrudgingly surrender a responsibility to someone who is clamoring for it. Even if you publicly claim to be happy to strike it off your busy schedule, feigning relief, the reality is that your pride is hurt.

You hope that person fails miserably and returns on their knees, imploring you to take it back. If they actually do, then your ego enjoys a massive feast.

But there’s a good chance that the new guy will instigate radical changes which make the project undeniably better. Without saying a word, he makes you look miserably inadequate. As if to rub it in, he invites you to celebrate every one of his successes and you must wear a smile and raise your glass to a toast even if your pride is undergoing Guantanamo Bay-like torture.

You feel as ridiculed as the man who spitefully threw out his barren wife only to see her mother twins with the guy next door.

If you are a gentleman, you will indeed suffer silently. If you are less of a gentleman, you will not accept those invites to celebrate your successor’s achievements. If you must be scorned, it will not be in your presence.

If you are even less of a gentleman, you will start mudslinging your successor in the hope that it will diminish his shine.

Then again if you are FUFA — which is the lowest rung in this ladder of cynicism —- you will forcefully try to recapture the project.

You will pay a few journalists to claim that the new guy has failed — even if there’s overwhelming evidence to the contrary —- and create an imaginary need for your return. You don’t care if your takeover attempt ruins the project completely. If you won’t have it then neither will your rival.

That’s what is happening with FUFA and the Uganda Super League (USL) headed by lawyer Kavuma Kabenge.

Lawrence Mulindwa looked like he’d swallowed a wasp when he signed on the dotted line to give up stewardship of the league to USL in front of media cameras.

A week later, after he’d composed himself, the FUFA boss told a press conference how running the league without a sponsor had been such a strain on the federation’s finances. “I have just spent sh60m paying referees,” he revealed. “Obviously I am happy to let go of that responsibility.” Nobody was convinced.

Within a month of the league changing hands, USL unveiled Ecobank as a new sponsor. They had done in 30 days what FUFA had failed to do in four years. Mulindwa was invited as a matter of procedure even if nobody at USL expected him to attend the unveiling. In his position, only a true gentleman would attend but no stretch of the word could possibly accommodate the headmaster.

For the first time in five years, the league ran smoothly; too smoothly for some people’s liking. Some media persons who were attuned to the Mulindwa-Magogo way of doing things found the complete absence of controversy far too mundane. But they didn’t have to look far for it. The Kakungulu Cup and the lower leagues, which are still run by FUFA, were rich in disputes and wrangles.

But the fans loved the USL product. League attendances which have been in a steady decline for the past five years suddenly reversed trend. The first half of the season recorded close to 20 percent increase in match attendances which might have fallen towards the end to an average of just over 10 percent. With every bit of USL success, FUFA’s ineptitude was exposed.

Then came the clincher. USL attracted the massive sponsorship of Supersport which could go up to $5m over five years. Mulindwa skipped this unveiling too.

Now the cold war between FUFA and USL has broken out into open combat, and it’s no longer about egos. FUFA will try everything to reclaim the league and all the Supersport cash that comes along with it. But if that fails — as it is doomed to —– they would rather ruin the deal so that nobody benefits.

Have they done it before? Oh yes, they have.

A couple of years ago FUFA commissioned Aldrine Nsubuga’s Anfield Communications to run the season-ending awards ceremony for football’s best performers. Armed with a signed contract, the indefatigable Aldrine wore out his sole marketing the awards until he found a sponsor in Nile Breweries. FUFA kept their cool until they saw a dummy cheque of sh160m written to Anfield Communications.

Federation spokesman Rogers Mulindwa told journalists that since the function was called FUFA Awards, the cheque should have been written to FUFA instead. Somehow such a frivolous argument was used to create a media storm as FUFA tried to reclaim the awards.

But when they failed in that — because Anfield had a stellar legal case — FUFA settled for the next best thing. If they weren’t going to get the money, neither would Anfield. In the end Nile Breweries, wary of the controversy, pulled out and the FUFA Awards baby was strangled at birth. That’s how Mulindwa thinks.

He has such a jaundiced outlook on life. His success is measured not just by what comes to him but also by what doesn’t go to other people. He fought Proline Academy with all his might just because Mujib Kasule dared to dream big.

The statutes are very clear on the fact that the league can never revert back to FUFA stewardship —– and Mulindwa probably knows as much. But he’s not about to sit back and let USL enjoy the sh2.2bn that will be flowing annually. If he wont have a share of it, nobody else will.

This once even Mulindwa’s biggest apologists are lost for words. Some of them have called me to say “you were right all along”. I am lovin’ it.

AllAfrica – All the Time