Local football could do with more goals

If there is one thing interwoven into the tapestry of football, it is that the so-called beautiful game will always put a premium on goals.
The sensation evoked after breaching the net of opponents is unparalleled. It is always greeted with a degree of pride and satisfaction by the scorer, their team-mates and fans as well.
So why then have Ugandan football outfits put together a knuckle-hard portrait that projects them as goal-averse? Evidence of this gloomy depiction keeps glaring at us with tremendous darkness. Statistics from the topflight league is a good place to start. They have made for such grim reading, conveying a deeply disturbing sense of impotence. Indeed one begins to get a sense of the enormity of the problem when they offer more than just a cursory glance at the figures.
The highest-scoring team in the Uganda Premier League this season - KCCA FC - has stuttered to 28 goals in 15 matches. That is a goals per game ratio of 1.9.

Marked improvement
The Kasasiro Boys in fact used a carbon copy of the aforesaid goals per game ratio (39 goals in 21 matches) to land the league title during the 2015/16 season.
There was a marked improvement last season - but hardly a spike - as KCCA picked up a 12th league title on the back of scoring 59 goals in 25 matches (2.4 goals per game).
If they are to heap another title on the back of the other this time round, they will need to dislodge a SC Villa side that has used, wait for it, 18 goals in 15 matches to ascend to the summit of the 16-team Uganda Premier League log.
A log leader that just about manages a goal per game speaks volume. This can hardly be construed as bolstering a growing showreel.
Above all, it shows how Ugandan football chooses to use a reactive paintbrush as opposed to proactive.
This ‘safety first’ approach has had a thin time in its endeavour to rake up goals.
Against this backdrop, one cannot help be wonder whether Sébastien Desabre’s attempt to impress ‘champagne football’ upon Ugandans is standing on surer ground.
Many would say it has made quicksand its breeding ground and rightly so. A mindset change is needed if that all too familiar sinking feeling is to be neatly sidestepped.
If your top scorer in the topflight league has seven goals at the halfway stage, then rest assured you have a problem in the final third.
If Ugandan attacking players don’t develop a hefty appetite for scoring goals, Cranes will keep sinking fast in quicksand at the big time.

Inquest into poor show at Chan 2018 needed

The moonwalk is widely defined in popular culture as a dance move in which one glides backwards whilst seemingly walking forward.
It sounds precisely like what Uganda have been doing across the past four editions of the African Nations Championship (Chan).
The nation’s jittering knees were brought to a crashing halt Thursday night when debutantes Namibia edged Cranes 1-0 in Marrakech.
The result means that Uganda will play its final Chan group match with nothing but pride at stake. The last time such a scenario panned out was when Cranes made their Chan debut at Sudan 2011. While the jitters tapered off during South Africa 2014 (Uganda went into its final group match undefeated after beating Burkina Faso and sharing the spoils with Zimbabwe), normal service was resumed two years later.
There was no doubt in the minds of the team’s most feverish critics that a wrecking ball was taken to Rwanda 2016. This after Cranes failed to win any of its three group matches, scoring only three goals in the losing cause.
It could get worse on Monday with Cranes fans bristling at the prospect of picking up a third successive loss when their team entertains Côte d’Ivoire.
If this sees the light of day, Uganda will have come full circle since its Chan debut all those years back.
This reflects poorly on Ugandan club football if anything because the Chan feels the pulse of the latter.
Laboured performances in the continental showpiece are a telltale that both the top and lower reaches of Ugandan club football has a feeble pulse.
An inquest into the laboured performances has to be sanctioned if those in positions of authority harbour any intentions of arresting the ‘moonwalk.’
As an old adage reminds us, only a fool can repeat a mistake and expect a different outcome.

What we now know....

We know that KCCA FC has not included the vastly experienced pair of goalkeeper Benjamin Ochan and utility left-sided player Isaac Muleme in its 2018 Caf Champions League squad.
We also know that the Ugandan champions have been active during the January transfer window, snapping up half a dozen players. The new signings - who include highly-rated net-minder Thomas Ikara as well as Solomon Okwalinga and Abubaker Masiko to mention but three - have swiftly been shoehorned into the Champions League squad.
The striker Tito Okello, who went AWOL after KCCA FC reportedly reneged on meeting his contractual obligations, is also included in the squad.
His erstwhile manager, Mike Mutebi has, however, made it perfectly clear that an olive branch won’t be offered to the lanky player.
Well, well, well...