… chickens come home to roost for thick-skinned football bosses
There’s an old saying that failure to plan properly amounts to planning to fail dismally! Well, the chickens finally came home to roost for our thick-skulled football bosses.
For those who care to revisit their memories – you might recall that wonderful historic afternoon earlier this year when the Namibia Football Association (NFA) unleashed details of the newly introduced Debmarine FA Cup sponsorship during the launch at the Safari Hotel.
Without beating about the bush, yours truly felt obliged to applaud the NFA hierarchy for managing to solicit such a massive sponsorship against all the odds stacked against them, but however did express some reservations about fixture congestion.
From the onset, the entire exercise was a non-starter to kick off the knockout tourney in the absence of organised league football structures. But alas, these blokes having become a law unto themselves would not lend me an ear, so to speak.
This sort of attitude boils down to sheer arrogance, punctuated by a lack of insight and respect for external views and advice.
Dear readers, you might recall that yours truly was also very much against the idea of increasing the teams in the country’s flagship league, the Namibia Premier League, from 12 to 16.
This particular exercise was an absolutely sickening and ill-timed poorly thought political strategy, which has in the interim boomeranged big time. Without an iota of doubt, this practice has simply and gravely weakened the already wobbling overall standard of our football.
Needless to say this author was labeled a “troublesome fellow and disruptive influence”, but audible whispers are now rife in certain quarters that the football bosses are putting their ducks in a row to get the size of the league trimmed to 12.
In the meantime, my learned colleagues at Football House are left with egg on the face and wrestling with a damn hot potato on their hands as a result of their dismal failure – or rather self-inflicted terminal inability – to apply their minds with a certain measure of competence and logical maturity.
Common sense tells us that football clubs are the genuine custodians of the beautiful game and should be taken into consideration when decisions affecting their functions are taken.
Is it perhaps not time now for the self-styled football gurus to swallow their misplaced pride, put aside their large egos and start involving their increasingly disgruntled subjects in constructive engagement? I’m just asking.
Football belongs to all and cannot be treated as a private entity, or become a sacred kingdom, a domain for a selected clique of “untouchable” individuals who are prefectly immune to public scrutiny and criticism.
On a more positive note, whilst one is happy that all the trauma of the last couple of months with regard to the immediate future of domestic football is gone and to some extent forgotten – one surely qualifies to post few questions.
Apart from the NPL’s failure to have started watertight negotiations at least a year before the MTC contract was to come to an end, yours truly is yet to be convinced as to what football has done wrong to be classified as a bad egg. And if it really is, what preventative measures are we going to effect to avoid any such re-occurrence?
Surely, it cannot be business as usual. All stakeholders should convene a football Indaba to define a comprehensive business module and conducive marketing strategies that would drive football to become a much-sought-after commodity.
I rest my case.