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International break analysis: Get to know Victor Wanyama’s Kenya

By Karl Harrington

Kenya and Ghana's supporteres cheer and react during the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier match between Kenya and Ghana, at the Kasarani Stadium in Nairobi, on September 8, 2018. (Photo by Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP) (Photo credit should read YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)
Kenya and Ghana's supporteres cheer and react during the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier match between Kenya and Ghana, at the Kasarani Stadium in Nairobi, on September 8, 2018. (Photo by Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP) (Photo credit should read YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images) /
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History of football in Kenya

The Kenyan national team, colloquially known as the Harambee Stars, do not have a footballing history quite as rich as other African nations. The side has qualified for five African Cup of Nations (AFCON) but has never made it out of the group. In fact, they failed to win a single game until their fifth tournament and fourteenth match when they recorded a 3-0 victory against Burkina Faso in 2004.

However, they have enjoyed success in the continent’s oldest football competition – the CECAFA Cup – a tournament consisting of eastern and central African nations. Kenya are the reigning champions and have won the tournament seven times in total.

It’s common knowledge that the sport’s development is thwarted in many African countries due to lack of resources and external forces and this is particularly pertinent in the case of Kenya.

Kenya’s national football federation was suspended by FIFA in 2004 due to governmental interference in footballing matters. After agreeing to reforms in January 2006 they were briefly welcomed back but failure to comply with the terms meant they were again suspended in October of the same year.

Until more recent FIFA initiatives, very little money had been available to invest into footballing projects in the country. The level of amateurism is caricatured in an anecdote in Ian Hawkey’s Feet of the Chameleon.

Hawkey writes of Gerry Saurer, an Austrian businessman and football enthusiast, who ran a hotel and restaurant in the southern city of Mombasa. Saurer ended up as the national team coach simply by volunteering himself for the position. Remarkably, he took the Harambee Stars all the way to the 1992 AFCON in Senegal.

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