Last week, KCCA FC appointed Brian Senyondo as co-coach to Jackson Magera Kaddu.
Senyondo is credited with guiding Kitara FC to the 2024 Stanbic Uganda Cup title. However, a messy start to the 2024/2025 season forced the Royals to sack him. Ssenyondo is also the U-17 national head coach.
Magera, on his part, led SC Villa to the third league position in the 2022/2023 season, but he was sacked and returned to KCCA, where he was appointed as one of Abdallah Mubiru’s assistants. Following Mubiru’s sacking on April 11, 2025, Magera assumed the team’s top seat, albeit on an interim basis.
Last season, KCCA struggled in the Uganda Premier League, finishing in fifth position. They also lost 0-2 to fierce rivals Vipers in the Stanbic Uganda Cup final, something which stretched KCCA’s lack of major silverware to six years.
CAN THE DUO DELIVER?
Personally, I feel recruitment of the duo is tricky and I get a feeling KCCA is trying so hard to emulate Vipers. Last season, the Venoms appointed John Luyinda and Fred Muhumuza as co-coaches; they ended up winning the 2024/2025 league title.
To me, there was little justification for KCCA to copy their rivals. This is so because Senyondo and Magera have different football philosophies. Magera, besides being a student of Mike Mutebi for more than half a decade, knows the club’s football philosophy, which centres on possession, attacking football, quick passing and intelligent movement.
On top of that, he spent several years with KCCA’s youth team, and he is credited with having moulded the likes of Allan Okello, Mustafa Kizza, Julius Poloto, Steven Serwadda and Lawrence Bukenya, among others.
On the other hand, although Ssenyondo is also a student of Mutebi, he doesn’t play the short, crisp passes which the KCCA fans demand. Nonetheless, KCCA reportedly chose Ssenyondo for his ability to influence some of the top players the club is targeting in the transfer exercise.
These players include Jude Semugabi, Lazaro Bwambale (Kitara) and URA’s top marksman, Ivan Ahimbisibwe. According to sources, the two coaches have sat down and zeroed in on other players who they want badly. First, they want the return of Herbert Achai to Lugogo. They also want to bring SC Villa’s Arnold Odong.
I am also reliably informed that there are also some players whose contracts have expired or who are no longer wanted at the club. These include Mustafa Mujuzi, Sadat Anaku, Sharif Senyendo, Steven Muguchi; and Issa Mubiru.
All in all, it remains to be seen whether the duo will succeed but one thing i know is that fans will have little patience when results go south. SC Villa was the first giant to try out joint coaches in the eighties but it was not successful.
In 1986, the Jogoos appointed Polly Ouma and Timothy Ayiekoh as co-coaches, but just a few weeks later, the two started disagreeing and the club moved fast to pick Ouma as head coach. SC Villa repeated the same thing in 1993 when they appointed Edirisa Nyombi as co-coach with Ayiekoh.
Yet again, things went bad until Nyombi was sacked. In 1996, SC Villa again recruited Eddie Butindo as co-coach to Ayiekoh but the latter resigned a month later. As I always say, KCCA’s problem is not mainly the technical wing; the problem emanates right from the top wigs at the City Hall down to the club’s board, not vice versa.
I think the club was wrong to hire Ssenyondo; Magera should have been given a second chance to handle the club alone. He is passionate about the youthful players, and we all remember what he did at SC Villa. What he needed was just full support from all the club’s stakeholders.