Virtually all clubs, apart from KCCA, struggle to maintain proper structures and have to go through a dip whenever there is a change in management. In fact, clubs can hardly sustain themselves when a big man leaves, yet it is through structures that clubs can be self-sustaining in the long term.
These well-documented structures are threefold: governance structure, management structure and fans’ structure. I was a young man when Hajji Abdul Kasujja founded KK Cosmos in the eighties. He had the money and football experience to build a force, but the moment he lost interest in the club, it folded within a few days.
The same can be said of Joseph Lusse, whose emerging giant killers, Buikwe Red Stars, hit the breaks the moment he got detained. There are many other examples, and we need to pray hard that God continues to grant Dr Lawrence Mulindwa more life because everything around Vipers revolves around him.
SC Villa cannot be spared in this and it still amazes me how some fans think club president Omar Ahmed Mandela used the left hand to give the right hand in the recent Linglong sponsorship deal with the club. In general, the lack of structures is also partly to blame for the lack of unity amongst Uganda Premier League clubs, something that continues to dent their progress as a unit.
They are hardly put into practice because all Fufa cares about is control and dominance. Unfortunately, Fufa, the custodian of the rules on structures, rarely encourages clubs to enforce them and only pulls out the rulebook selectively. Fufa applied the trick to Jinja SS, Kyetume FC and most recently, Arua Hill.
So, at a time when every club is content with running its own affairs its own way, the much-needed commerciality of domestic football will continue to be a pipe dream be- cause structures form the business sense of club football.
In fact, it is through these structures that many potential business partners or sponsors can come on board. In the absence of a clear separation of powers in management, accounts, finance and procurement, few business partners can trust you with money.
On the other hand, proper structures can be conveyor belts to develop players within clubs. In Uganda, players are the biggest cash cows but tend to be quickly discarded after retirement. In the developed football world, former players are moving beyond the limitations of coaching to dominate other football fields such as management, panellists, analysts, commentators, ambassadors.
These former players don’t need money tokens, as is done here, where Moses Magogo parades them for brown envelopes; they need training opportunities to shine beyond their playing days.
What helps KCCA stay afloat and be consistent across different management teams is that all positions in leadership are collective and can change at any moment.
Their structure also helps them assimilate retired players into the system more than any other club.
The author is SC Villa president emeritus
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