What Magogo’s tirade of insults says of local football and the prevailing big man syndrome

Over time your columnist has come to appreciate the fact that limitations are exactly what one can only come to enjoy about Ugandan football. Ideally, they should be enormously disconcerting to watch.

Ugandan football and ideals have however never worked as efficiently and unobtrusively as ought to be the case. This has consequently given us ringside seats as things unfold (as they always seem to do!) in such ramshackle fashion.

Given all this, Moses Magogo’s expletive-laden outburst should not have offended our sensibilities in the manner it has. I mean was it not yesterday that we were repelled by deficiencies in the Fufa president’s character after he entered a plea bargain?

A few feigned surprise at the fact that Magogo conceded to having mischievously dipped his fingers in the cookie jar. The vast majority however – while acknowledging that this had been an ugly battle with no winners – concluded that Magogo, the plea bargain, and everything in between revealed a bizarrely accurate picture of this nation.

Any good-faith analysis of Ugandan football would acknowledge things have got better on many measures under Magogo’s stewardship. But does this give him carte blanche to tell dissenting voices to stop complaining and be grateful for their lot?

Definitely not! Unfortunately, the fawning sycophancy so prevalent in Uganda always encourages Magogo to unabashedly charge full tilt and fire all his ammunition. So do not expect the all-knowing Fufa president’s recent employment of vulgar slang to leave him a diminished figure.
The 44-year-old newly elected legislator will surely bounce back from his latest display of arrogance.

Such is the larger-than-life persona that Magogo has cultivated that he need not to gingerly emerge from a crisis. He has succeeded in convincing legions of Ugandans that local football will be poorer without him. His cronies need little invitation to declare that Ugandan football will be up against impossible odds in the post-Magogo era.

Which is exactly what they have been doing this past week. The cronies might do most of the heavy lifting, but this morbid totalitarianism has always been propped by the [big] man himself.

Your columnist was on NTV’s Press Box set when Magogo took sadistic pleasure in stating that he is “the best Fufa president Uganda has ever had.”
 
Magogo apologists will tell you, dear reader, that it should not feel wrong to bestow the highest praise on someone whose presidency has much that is good in it. This though is classic big man syndrome. And here is the disheartening thing, this “me, myself and I” mentality delights in receiving plaudits for feats and apportioning blame for failures to other parties.

It explains why Magogo cannot own the Cranes’ recent meltdowns at Chan finals and Afcon qualifiers.
If this bigmanism seems as surreal as it is familiar, it is because you could have encountered it in an Orwellian narrative. We have reached the juncture where Napoleon (Magogo) tries everything remotely possible to turn Snowball (Cranes players) into a fall guy.

This should ideally register as a gross oversimplification in the eyes of the right-thinking members of society. The performance of a footballing unit is essentially supposed to be a shared responsibility. There are so many layers to peel away at this collective. It cannot be reduced to a singular party.

But then again, if success is claimed by a singular party, failure should ditto such an approach that undoubtedly lacks sophistication and class. The sad thing is this impulse can only be numbed but not removed by any amount of criticism.

Sycophants will always be at hand to act as a vital shock absorber for the big man. So pop yourself some popcorn, pull a ringside seat, dear reader, and enjoy the limitations!

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @robertmadoi