Atraco’s story is anti-climax at its best

When Atraco won the league title last season, I was among the few who expressed optimism about the future of our local football, actually I was among those hoodwinked to believe that this club was here for keeps and perhaps become another bull in the kraal alongside APR and Rayon Sports. Alas. From a roar (petite as it was) to a whimper, from the realization that sports (professional, semi-professional, amateur or even unrated) has an unlimited capacity to excite the sentiment that those who run it are occasionally capable of astonishing acts of foolhardiness. The three top clubs; APR, Rayon and Atraco will go into next season (which starts next month) to decide the 2008/09 league champion. It might be one-sided; it could come down to the last game. Who knows? The only thing that can be said with certainty is that, after the stunning events going on at the later, next season will be the very definition of an anti-climax. It shouldn’t be happening, of course. Atraco’s strong start to life in the country’s premier football division demanded a conclusion. The same goes for Rayon’s stunning effort to put their house in order, which for years, has clearly on the limit of what their desolate way of running the club warranted. Whether that conclusion is what we saw last season when Atraco won the league or there is more still to come, remains the top question but when all’s said and done, whatever is going on at Atraco or is about to unfold has come as a major let down on the side of the club managers. And if the league champions ought to have a better campaign next season than what they are bound to get, what of the fans and those taking trouble to follow Rwandan football who were expecting probably ‘the best league campaign ever’ or call it the ‘heights of ecstasy’ to instead be driven to the depths of disappointment? For a club that was formed just four years ago, it’s full credit for them to win the national league and reached the Peace Cup twice even though they were on the losing end on both occasions. There were joyful, a few flag-bearing fans in some sections of the city after Atraco won the championship to become only the third club to win it in 14 years hence breaking APR and Rayon’s dominance. If you were a neutral or one who follows local football without prejudice, Atraco’s coming was the best thing Rwandan football needed for the sake of its improvement and the fruits of that had started budding but sorry to say, all the good work could be going down the drainage because of one or two bizarre individuals. I hate to state this but with what is happening at Atraco (first sacking a winning coach in Sam Ssimbwa, then letting the best coach in country move on because you don’t match his ambitions after guiding you to your first trophy of any sort), I get a feeling that all our local sports administrators are born of the same mother. They don’t seem to know what they want or how best to do what they’re supposed to do—take an example of Atraco top manager (I’m not naming names but they who they’re) who without putting up any form of resistance, tear apart the squad by letting the best players leave to join rivals on top of failing to convince their league winning coach not to leave when he told them he wanted to leave (due to their lack of proper planning for the club). Love or loath him, Jean-Marie Ntagwabira has proved on more than one occasion that he’s the best local coach, whoever supposes or advocates otherwise must get prepared to lose the argument before it even gets started. The taxi-men club are going to represent Rwanda in next year’s MTN Champions League but when you see them lose key players like Patrick Mafisango, Ismail Nshutinamagara, and Abedi Mulenda with both Peter Kagabo and Tom Semwogerere to follow them, you wonder whether withdrawing from the competition altogether wouldn’t be the best option. Without replacements of similar or even better quality to the departing players, Atraco is surely just going to make numbers on the continent while on the local scene, they are going to shift from a club competing for cups to an also run-in like Kiyovu and Mukura have been for years, am afraid. Started as just another club, first under veteran coach Aloys Kanamugira who guided them to the first division, then Ssimbwa who took them to second place in the league and Peace Cup final in their debut season in the topflight division, Atraco had become a club everyone was talking about as the answer to APR’s dominancy but most importantly as a club built on a steady foundation. But I guess all that was to blindfold us as the club managers led by the influential vice president Issa Ngeza are hell-bent to run the club more like a tomato stall in a down town market than a top football club that should be fighting for cups, especially when you consider the input from the last three years. Is it because they (Ngeza and his cohorts) are making more money from selling off the club’s best players? Never underestimate the greed of our local sports administrators but, given the costs incurred in building a side that has finished second, third and first since its promotion to the top division, it is hard to see how they can make more money (than they already have). I could go on for a while guessing the motives of Mr. Ngeza and Co. in this instance but that would be pointless and, in any case, you have a new season to look forward to, don’t you? Instead, I will leave you with my hunch. After last season and all the self-inflicted pity because one or two managers decided in some committee room that they can not compete with APR for whatever reason, Atraco will go into the new season as champions but hoping to end it as they went into their debut (season). Play not to win the title but to stay afloat in the division. What a miserable, petty and selfish decision, but then that’s what we should expect from a miserable, petty and selfish committee of taxi operators who disguise as the greatest football people to ever run a football club. Contact: nku78@yahoo.com