This is not the right time for Fufa to read the riot act to club owners

It seems like ages ago since Fufa sputtered into a rage at the mere mention of Fifa’s coronavirus relief funds. If the local football governing body still rages as it did at the height of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, then it wears its bile more discreetly.

The tone that was notably unapologetic as three tranches of a $1 million (about Shs3.7b) solidarity grant trickled in has quietened down. While this development deserves a qualified welcome, it risks being seen as some sort of stay of execution.

As the pandemic continues to hobble the finances of Ugandan football stakeholders, Fufa has seen no harm in reducing itself to a bureaucratic talking shop. During that time the local football governing body has made it abundantly clear that a sense of duty should compel club owners to pay players and backroom staff.

Clubs that do not provide proof of payment through PAYE receipts (for players) and monthly pay slips (for coaches) risk being singled out as uniquely reprehensible.

With the bottom widely deemed to have fallen off, though, players and coaches can be forgiven for charging that this is not the time for half measures. Both parties want something tangible, and for them your average talking shop hardly marks a feat of astonishing human brilliance.

Clearly, if suspicions are not to loom suffocating large, Fufa will have to meet the aggrieved parties at their point of need. While the rhetoric coming out of consultative meeting after consultative meeting is not unseemly, Fufa should be conscious of the fact that the worst human impulses threaten its success.

For now, the impetuous decision is to survive. Whichever way you slice it, in the short-term, rhetoric does not guarantee survival. Good talk might be music to the ears, but it as sure as hell hardly keeps one’s head above water.

What words of caution/wisdom can do is help one avoid getting into a position where grappling with a sinking feeling becomes the order of the day.
They are in a sense as disarming as they are proactive. But, here is the problem, proactivity feels out of kilter when responding to the pandemic’s sledgehammer blow.

Put simply, the approach has got to be reactive. And in acting in response to the angst and distress, Fufa has to buttress whoever is placed in its care. This is probably why Fifa sent the relief funds in the first place. It must have noticed that a hand needed to be held in a disconcertingly difficult period.

As a new mood of desperation takes hold, Fufa also ought to know that it’s not just players and coaches that are reeling. Club owners are not nearly as impregnable as the local football governing federation seems to assume.

If anything, the pandemic has left them fragile. They are far from being neither free nor able to shape their own destiny. If league football does resume in October, it will do so in zealous adherence to social distancing mandates that keep fans (and, by extension, sponsors) away.

The financial implications of all of this has the hallmarks of an apocalypse.
With wallets of many club owners showing cracks, surprise should be the least expression when (not if!) footballing entities go bust.

Third tier Kansai Plascon for one appears to be on the brink of falling through the cracks after terminating the contracts of all playing and backroom staff at the backend of July. Many other clubs are walking a similar tight rope.

Against that backdrop, Fufa should strive to help clubs stay afloat in what is proving to be a cold business. Now is not the time to read the riot act.

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Twitter: @robertmadoi