KPL to hold crunch meeting over FKF 18-team plan

The Kenyan Premier League (KPL) Governing Council will hold a crunch meeting on Friday to deliberate on Football Kenya Federation’s proposal to expand the country’s top flight league to an 18-team competition up from 16 next season.

Expanding the league is one of the items on the agenda during Saturday’s FKF Annual General Meeting with federation president, Nick Mwendwa, reported to have said the matter was a foregone conclusion.

However, another bitter showdown is looming after KPL CEO; Jack Oguda denied an agreement was in place to add an extra two sides to the top flight competition.

“Previous discussion has been held and now is not the right time because we don’t have more funding just yet.

“I’ve heard reports but I don’t know what the position is right now since I have been out of the country. The Governors will decide whether they feel now is the right time to increase the number of teams or not,” Oguda told Citizen Digital on Tuesday.

Following his election in February, Mwendwa pledged to expand the top flight as means of giving local players a bigger platform to showcase their talent with plans to promote four teams from the second-tier National Super League at the end of the season.

Two from KPL will be demoted if the AGM ratifies the proposal on Saturday but Oguda expressed fears hiking the number of matches would take a huge toll on players and in turn lower the quality of football.

“It means an additional 66 games and owing to previous experiences, this has not been working too well for us. For example, we had a lot of cases of teams giving walkovers and such are the things that really taint the image of any league.

“Last time we tried that, it took the intervention of FIFA together with the clubs who in the end felt the league was better off with 16 teams,” the KPL boss asserted.

The expansion of the top tier league was a subject of controversy at the start of the 2015 season with KPL against the 18-team format demanded by the then FKF boss, Sam Nyamweya.

FKF is also proposing aligning the domestic competition with the European football calendar, a suggestion that was also shot down during Nyamweya’s regime.

The standoff over the 18 versus 16 teams in the KPL saw Nyamweya obtain a court injunction against the KPL that saw the competition suspended for two weeks in March.

He then established the FKF-Premier League and promoted 14 teams from the second tier to join four that had earlier been elevated to the KPL by the federation following the conclusion of the 2014 season.

However, Fifa brokered talks resolved to leave KPL intact with Nakuru All Stars and Nairobi City Stars who had been relegated in the old format reinstated into the league as division Posta Rangers and Kakamega Homeboyz who had won their respective Zones in the second tier missed out.

KPL club chairmen contacted to shed light on the matter declined to give their views in what looks like an effort to avoid stoking controversy and another bitter showdown with the federation.

Expanding the league will mean splitting revenue from league and broadcast sponsors, a prospect KPL sides are reluctant to endorse in light of diminishing earnings from other avenues such as gate collections, shirt sponsorship, merchandising and in cases, parent companies.

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Nick Mwendwa National Super League Kenyan Premier League football Jack Oguda

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