Football is just a game, it doesn't need extraordinary people to play it. You develop your skill, you join a team, the team develops and uses strategies for winning, simulates games (friendlies) and plays with an intelligent control mechanism.

All kinds of professionals are called in to support the team. The team is now a machine working in the whole system's political machine. So much is at stake. Who's getting what? When?

It becomes a question of power. Getting power and clinging to it. Deals. FIFA without corrruption is impossible.

Kenyan flourish in soccer is a question of radical political change. The man on the street is made to believe government doesn't interfere in soccer but governments are heavily involved and the whole thing is messy.

If Kenya's political outlook can turn to be a stronger exporter of products and culture, and have greater moral power in terms of political ideology then we can see our teams shining.

define "did well"? secondly correlation or causality?

@masukuma has not said anything remotely intelligent nor sensible on this thread. He has taken refuge by attempting sarcasm. So I will leave him alone.

Folks this is not rocket science. I am about to state the obvious.

A person mentioned above that a team needs to play together for a long time in order to gain cohesion. A team that has trained together for only 3 days has no chance at being cohesive. How can Olunga and Oliech form a good attacking pair when they have never played together even in a friendly?

How can Mandela and Olum coordinate central defence if they have never played together even in a friendly? They cant. Thats why Kenya's defence looked porous.

No wonder Kenya never does well. We never prepare. Last year, senior players like Wanyama begged for friendlies and instead they were sent to Brazil on holiday. Meanwhile Lesotho was busy training. It came as no surprise when Lesotho eliminated Kenya.

Its as if we never learn.

But Kenya's problems go deeper. Kenya is one of the few countries where youth development does not exist. How often does Kenya even have a U20 team? Almost Never.

How many Kenyan clubs have youth development structures? As far as I can tell, only Gor Mahia has a U19 team. But even that is poorly funded. This is not a recipe for success.

With no youth development structures, Kenya are doomed.

Kenya has good individual players. The fact that a Kenyan like Oliech, Mariga and Wanyama and Mike Okoth can excel in Europe without ever having gone through formal youth development shows that Kenya has potential.

If Kenya can just get a measure of organization, the game can go places.

No Kenya is not hapless at football. Kenya has good players who are being let down by poor organization.

This entire post is bogus
The idea that a country should only focus on what they are good at is silly.
What should Kenyans who like football do? Should they just give up.

I have said this many times and will say it again. Kenyans are not better at volleyball than Ugandans nor are we naturally better at rugby than Nigerians or Ghanaians.

How well a country does in a sport depends on how seriously they take it. Rugby is not taken seriously in Nigeria. If they start taking it seriously, they will give Kenya serious competition or even beat Kenya.

I believe it was our fellow forummer kaka2za who made the observation that when rugby was mostly played around Nairobi, then Nairobi based schools like Lenana, Saints and Patch dominated. And at one point, almost all national team players were from Lenana, Patch and Saints.

Now that upcountry schools like Katch and Yala are taking the sport seriously, they are beating Nairobi based schools.

Using masukuma's logic, one would have assumed that upcountry people are incapable of rugby.

The same applies to volleyball. Kenya wins at volleyball because other African countries do not take it seriously especially at grassroots level. Its not because Kenyans are naturally better.

This is a very basic concept and I can't help but wonder why people do not understand it.

Back in the 1970s, Zaire was the best African nation in football by far because President Mobutu took the sport very seriously. He funded the teams, sent them to Europe for training and so forth.

Just look at Japan for example. Football league was non-existent in Japan until the late 1980s. They had never even qualified for a world cup. Now they are among the worlds best. Same with the USA. They only started to take football seriously in the early 1990s.

If East Africans want to excel at football, they need a similar revolution. They need better organization. They need youth structures. Back in 1978, Uganda almost won Africa nations cup and their striker Philip Omondi was the top scorer at AFCON and was the most feared striker in Africa. Thats shows Uganda has potential and so does Kenya.

Now lets see if masukuma can refute my points intelligently without cowardly resorting to sarcasm and name calling.

@ Masukuma Sports are not just about winning. Only about ten nations have won the world cup but the game would surely die if other nations gave up.

Kenya is good at athletics but it's hard to get a crowd of 5,000 even during the national trials. On Sunday,I and over 20,000 Kenyans flocked the Nyayo stadium though we knew the odds were against us. We love the game,win or lose ,it remains the most popular sport.