With another foreign Cranes coach on the horizon, we have to ask: why?

What should we make of Morley Byekwaso's recent appointment, albeit on an interim basis, as Cranes head coach? A smooth salesman with a forensic accountant’s eye for minutiae would doubtless have a lot to say. 

The mistake is in imagining that Fufa will entrust a local coach with the Cranes reins on a full-time basis. The odds rather predict the inverse, with the smart money installing Csaba László as a clear favourite to return for a second stint in the Cranes dugout. More on good old László shortly.

It is not as if local coaches have struggled to assert themselves in meaningful ways. No. While their power evaporates with each day they serve, the hard evidence shows that local coaches keep doing their job and by all accounts keep doing it well.

Yet at the core of foreign coaches’ failures lurks an unexpectedly retrograde logic. And it is not just Fufa that has proved boneheaded on this point. The country’s top clubs—Vipers SC, KCCA FC and SC Villa—now also balk at the prospect of having a local coach calling the shots from the dugout. They claim to have reluctantly come to the conclusion that foreign coaches add a degree of flex to their chances. But do they?

It is way too early to find the foreign coaches directing traffic at Kitende and Lugogo’s synthetic pitches unimaginative and lacking in fresh ideas. If anything, their employers are said to be enormously supportive. A sentiment difficult to fault, though, is the fact that the jury is still out. This is reified by recent developments that saw both Vipers and KCCA tamely exit this season’s Caf inter-club competitions with a whimper.

For those that have made the decision to proceed with caution and scepticism, there is a good reason why the mental exercise of denial has been made harder. Watching local coaches make a good fist of it before invites many questions. More than anything, it makes one recognise as prodigious and intensely imaginative the work Mike Mutebi pulled off during his most recent stint at Lugogo. 

The audacious enormity of Mutebi's deep runs on the continent with KCCA did not quite get the recognition they richly merited. Hopefully, they do so now. What is unfortunate is that it has to take the failings of foreign coaches to sit up and take notice of how Mutebi pulled a rabbit out of a hat.

Regardless, it is worth lingering over the implication here. With support, local coaches can be just as good if not better than their foreign counterparts we are so obsessed with.

Back to László as earlier promised, if—as the grapevine claims—his return is cast in stone, it will be fascinating to see if the 59-year-old tactician still maintains the glint that turned the head of Scottish top flight club, Hearts. The Romanian-Hungarian, in a sense, takes great pride in the imprint he made on David Obua's playing career.

When a mercurial streak gave way to maturity once never thought possible, Obua finally had a crack at European club football, albeit in the lower reaches with Hearts. What tends to be overlooked is the prior influence local coaches had on the maverick of Ugandan football. It culminated in Mutebi handing Obua the Cranes captaincy a few years after the turn of the second millennium.

Even more surprising was the brouhaha with which the decision to hand Obua the armband was greeted. Many stopped short of calling the decision an abomination. Mutebi, always ahead of his time, was seeing something that was not immediately visible to many if not all. 

For those that are amazed to discover that good old László is still relevant at all, the decision not to headhunt Mutebi boggles the mind. Fufa president Moses Magogo has previously said that Mutebi has made clear his disinterest in the job. The question that should invariably follow is simple: why?

The answer to this simple question, in its drawing of unsentimental conclusions, should give a vague idea of what needs to happen to change Uganda's fortunes—wholesale changes in the boardroom. Thank you.

This, though, will never see the light of day. So, hello mediocrity it is.