Several Ugandan clubs have over the years been known as ‘selling teams’, something that still applies to some today.
They buy players on realistic sign on fees of about UShs5 million– real bargains, actually – and develop them for a season or two and then have to watch as they are sold for bigger money, or to their league rivals.
Reigning Uganda Cup champions SC Vipers, formerly Bunnamwaya FC, are one such club and in a way it is a shame to see this happen to a well organised club.
In the last two or three seasons you could argue that they have punched above their weight, as successive qualifications to the continent were obtained without too much fuss.
Indeed, last season, they came so very close to an African Champions League qualification place only to finish below rivals KCCA.
Every season the club appears to have to sell some of its most talented individuals and whilst the cash-in is a positive, you would think that the club would suffer, but that’s not been the case.
The recruitment of new players is as sound as you can find and not only do they fit straight into the team, they also seem to take the club to another level on every occasion.
Gor Mahia, TP Mazembe and Standard Liege have all plundered the Buikwe club in the last four years and during the coming season, it is expected to be a much bigger yard sale.
Each sale is logical, but when viewed together, it has the feel of an exodus and Vipers have the feel of a lost club, desperately scrambling to find its way again. The selling may continue, but Vipers are now struggling to spend the money they have in the bank from Farouk Miya’s lucrative move to Belgium in January. Miya is pedigree; the most outstanding footballer in the country today. He progressed through Kitende in 2013 to join Vipers and is now club captain, an established Uganda Cranes international.
In the greater scheme of things, Ugandan football lovers should give a befitting approval to the Vipers-St Mary’s Kitende project that has been a long time in the making, spearheaded by Lawrence Mulindwa.
Mulindwa, the immediate former Fufa boss, has devotedly engineered his school, St Mary’s Kitende’s ascension to the apex of school football.
In turn the Kitende school football team have become a conduit for his club Vipers; more than 80 per cent of the team that started in the penultimate game against Villa has gone through Kitende.
Vipers may have won just two league titles in the last six years but with Kitende continuing to invest in good young players, the club’s future is in safe hands.
Club proprietor Mulindwa has also struck a balance between football and academics, duly getting his rewards in silverware for both school and club.
Organisation and discipline, according to Mulindwa, are ‘gospels preached’ when they are nurturing young footballers, with the fruits of such efforts reaped by the club later. In the mid or long term, such a model can do no harm to the national team.
Everything about the academy, from the amenities to the pedigree of the coaches — several of them former players for the powerful Kitende team — signifies quality.
Even at a time when the obsession with developing talent remains as urgent as ever, when scarcely a week passes without some prominent voice- during new head coach Abdallah Mubiru’s unveiling at Imperial Resort Hotel, Entebbe yesterday, club owner Lawrence Mulindwa vowed to sell off more players.
“Henceforth we are not entertaining irresponsive and non-productive players at the club. We want to export players on a seasonal basis so that we make gains in this big project,” he said.
Coach Mubiru’s job now is to prepare youngsters like Bashir Mutanda (Vipers U-17), Ashraf Mandela (Vipers U-17), Geoffrey Wasswa (Vipers U-17), Frank ‘Zagga’ Tumwesigye (Vipers U-17) and Alex Komakech (Vipers U-17) for sale by giving them enough playing time while their ‘father’ Edward Golola is now playing a ‘free role’ oscillating between the junior teams and the senior team.
The Vipers owner is right about concentrating on developing young talents who can break into the major European leagues.
In Uganda and Africa, clubs don’t have the facilities to train the players to a particular level so the Europeans find it very difficult working with already mature players aged 24 and 25.
In Europe, the market now is looking for young players aged 18 and 19; European coaches/managers want players they have developed themselves.
When these older players move to Europe, it becomes very difficult. So now we here have to train in the process of developing them very young.
What football does with its young players – and what exactly this is doing to them – has been a concern from the early professional days.
Nearly two years since striker Yunus Sentamu left Vipers, he has been embroiled in an endless transfer standoff between AS Vita of DR Congo and Tunisian side Sfaxien but reports say Sentamu is currently ‘grassing’ in Finland.
Mulindwa is wisely holding back from splashing the cash just yet, as he looks over who he has and decides on what he needs.
He has returned Harunah Kyobe, who was suspended for 16 months by Fufa in April and Thaddeus Kitandwe for pocketing Joseph Mpande’s transfer fee from Vipers to Horizon FC in Myanmar, who in turn only bought Ibrahim Kayiwa from Express and Brian Kakaire from Swedish outfit Vaxjo while the rest are promoted players from their under-17 set-up.
But it doesn’t work like that. It can be a harsh environment. There are so many variables. These people who make the decisions for you, they’ve got someone ahead of them making decisions pressuring them. At the end of the day a player’s well being gets pushed to the back. The European scouts will tell club, it’s a results business. In the end everyone’s out for themselves.
In part the Kitende academy is a kind of due diligence exercise, a necessary sweep just in case that one-in-a-million player turns up. A single genius redeems the whole process, never mind these precious gems seem to turn up only as part of a more thorough process.
Last year Mulindwa revealed that part of the club’s 5-year work plan dubbed ‘Safari Yetu,’ is to construct a clubhouse which will also house a gym for the team staff. Also under the project the club intends to build structures, independent financing of the club as well as looking for donors and sponsors, building estates for the club and also investing club funds in some commercial activities like agriculture.
Optimism is high at Vipers for the coming season, though. A new coach and great expectations of more of the same make it an engaging season for their fans, but even with the positivity hovering in the air, the club need to hold onto the best players and build around them to compete on the continent like TP Mazembe or Enyimba.
Equally, Mulindwa, who has invested a lot of the money in Ugandan football, will become more enhanced among the football fraternity as a selling club owner.
Kitende, Vipers to other clubs
- Farouk Miya (Standard Liege)
- Yunus Sentamu (AS Vita, CS Sfaxien)
- Tony Odur (Express, Bunnamwaya, Express, KCC, Nkana)
- Kizito Luwagga (Leixões, Covilhã)
- Yudah Mugalu (Bunnamwaya, Victors, Motema Pembe, KCC, Villa, Kira Young)
- Murushid Juuko (Bunnamwaya, SCVU, Simba TZ)
- Godfrey Walusimbi (SC Villa, Bunnamwaya/Vipers, Don Bosco, SC Villa, Gor Mahia ) among others
