Mathare United relegated
American motivational speaker, writer and consultant Denis Waitley once said: “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is a delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end.”
Mathare United chairman Bob Munro seems to have partly borrowed the words of Waitley when he said the team is not dead yet despite being relegated from the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) Premier League by the Transition Committee, for missing three consecutive matches.
Munro, the team’s founder, said Mathare will be back in the league in a strong way.
“This isn’t the end of the road for Mathare United but the beginning of a new challenge and journey,” Munro told People Sport in response to the FKF Transition Committee’s letter demoting the team to the less prestigious National Super League (NSL) next season.
Financial crisis
The 2008 champions, who are going through a financial crisis, are paying a heavy price for missing three matches against Bandari, Ulinzi Stars and Sofapaka on diverse dates this season.
Munro had earlier conceded that the management had been going around with begging bowls to sustain the team to no avail.
In a statement, Munro gave a sad account profiling the team’s empty coffers, hence the latest development.
“Since the 2021/2022 season started, the club only managed to continue playing due to four key reasons which are donations and loans from sympathetic friends,”
Added the statement: “By mid-April, our club had enough funds to cover the basic needs of our home matches but instead, the funds were used to conduct an MRI scan for an injured player, to repay a few urgent debts, to pay our office rent and to partially offset outstanding salaries.
However, the law governing football had to take its course with the Transition Committee promptly with a letter dated May 13, 2022, which was signed by the Head of Secretariat Linda Oguttu and was copied to Munro, thus sounding the death knell of the club that was founded in 1994.
“We have in our possession the match official reports on your match numbers 237, 250 and 259 pitting yourself against Bandari, Ulinzi and Sofapaka and which matches were scheduled to be played on 24/04/2022, 30/04/2022 and 6/05/2022 respectively.
It’s evident that the said matches were not played for reasons attributed to your team which failed to honour the fixtures and the same were thus awarded to your opponent’s.”
