Seventeen years on, Ugandan football cannot muster an answer to a question Abbas asked

From the time your columnist started actively following Ugandan football as a trained journalist to date, a chaotic diversity of coaches have taken their place in the Cranes dugout. None has had their spell replete with absurdities as did Mohammed Abbas.

The Egyptian spent close to three event-filled years – between 2004 and 2006 – in Uganda, during which he spun his own version of a preposterous Bollywood plot.

The sheer magnitude of the task he inherited from Mike Mutebi was obvious from the get-go. Yet still he brought an incisive knowledge and affability to the job. The headline-grabbers Abbas managed during his topsy-turvy spell should not be mistaken for anything like victory; at best they were satiric comedy with a touch of naivete.

By 2005, he had not yet figured out that allowing Ugandans to triumphantly toss you in the air is not a good idea. Especially when you have a wallet jam-packed with $1,000 in your back pocket.

The pickpocket that left Abbas on the verge of bursting into tears – after Geoffrey Sserunkuma’s strike had settled a 2006 Fifa World Cup qualifier against Cape Verde at Namboole – was brutal. But his (the fans that maniacally hailed the win with Abbas on the lush green of Mandela National Stadium, Namboole, were all male) actions merely reflected broader anxieties around the challenges the Egyptian coach was forced to confront.

If it was not the chef in the Cranes residential camp subjecting players to abnormally thin chicken wings, it was the very presence of a one Chris Mubiru around the players.

Whereas all these episodes made for pure comedy, a sweeping rebuke the Egyptian delivered all those years ago rings true. During one his first interviews with your columnist, Abbas said the size of Ugandan players could end up being the loose thread that unravels Ugandan football’s world.

At that time Robert Ssentongo had earned the right to lead the line at both club and international levels. Abbas found this odd. How?

“When I first came to Uganda in the 1980s [to play in a Caf inter-club tie], players used to be big,” the Egyptian told me, revealing all the white in his eyes to emphasise the ‘big’; “What happened?”

Your columnist could not readily provide an answer. Photographic evidence from the Cranes matches during the said period offered overwhelming support to Abbas. So what really happened? Such was Abbas’s obsession with size that he ended up handing Mujib Kasule a rare cap during a Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup championship. Even Abbas’s replacement in the Cranes dugout – Csaba László – also seemed to have a special affinity with the sheer physicality of players. And Eugene Sseppuya vindicated him on more than one occasion.

Sseppuya has since moved on to become a player intermediary. The vast bulk of the players Morley Byekwaso used to guide Uganda to a runners-up finish at this year’s Africa Under-20 Cup of Nations in Mauritania are his clients.

Most of them now butter their bread at one of Sseppuya’s former clubs – SC  Villa. Did I also mention that most are also, er, diminutive in stature? This palpable absence of physicality has not been without its drawbacks.

The Jogoos have one of the worst defences in the Ugandan top flight, and always give away a goal to a set play (KCCA’s Davis Kasirye must be rubbing his hands in anticipatory relish ahead of today’s league game at the Fufa Technical Centre in Njeru).

Evidently, the problem that Abbas identified back in 2004 cannot be wished away. It also, perhaps, explains why Ugandan players nowadays find it terribly difficult to join the paid ranks.

Seventeen years on, a question Abbas belligerently posed – what happened – remains but a perilous provocation. As it stands, we should hedge our bets on futsal. Do not laugh!

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Twitter: @robertmadoi