Africa-Press – Tanzania. SERIOUS measures must be taken to bring Kagame Cup Club back to its former glorious days, or else the East African countries will see it firmly wrapped in deathbed.
Today when the tournament rages on in two venues of Dar es Salaam, only a few teams volunteered to participate as many big names have opted not to come to Dar es Salaam.
Timing has been a major problem in the Kagame Cup and other tournaments organized by the Council for East and Central African Football Associations (CECAFA) as the council should stage its tournaments after a thorough scrutiny of sports calendar of its member states.
Also worth to consider is the awards, CECAFA must improve prize package to the winners in order to motivate teams to participate. By doing so, the value of the competition will be even greater.
Thus, if the organizers direct large sums of money, this will lure top clubs to participate and feel proud of their participation and in case they win, they are sure to benefit not only from the title but also financially.
This year the teams have participated; big teams like Young Africans, Azam, and Express; while other big ones like Simba, Tusker, Gor Mahia and URA opted not to bring their teams. Still the big teams participating have been using their second or reserve players while giving their key players a long break.
In the past, these competitions had good participation, teams participated in the quest for the championship, but now it has become different; teams see their involvement as not compulsory. For example, in this year’s tournament, most of the member countries have not participated.
Among the countries that have not released teams are Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, and Kenya. There is every reason to increase investment in this competition, as through this tourney teams might have an opportunity to sharpen their squad for the new league season.
CECAFA should also reconsider rescheduling of this tournament if it wants the value of the competition to grow. This can only be possible if the dates are fixed in the mid of the season and not during holiday season, to bring up top team key players to participate.
Inspite of all these setbacks we laud CECAFA for staging this year’s tournament and they should it to stage better event next time.
