Mwendwa hopes Zambia friendly can lead to league restart

Football Kenya Federation (FKF) president Nick Mwendwa says the level of compliance for the Covid-19 safety protocols during Friday’s international friendly match pitting Harambee Stars and Zambia’s Chipolopolo will determine whether topflight football can resume.

Speaking  after the government cleared Harambee Stars to host Zambia in their first match of the year, Mwendwa said he would ensure the match satisfies the Ministry of Sports to allow restart of FKF Premier League.

Late last month President Uhuru Kenyatta relaxed most of the stringent rules put to curb spread of coronavirus as part of measures to re-open the economy that slowed since March when the first Covid-19 case detected in the country.

“I’m hoping now that the government has allowed us to play this game (friendly match), once we show that we can implement the protocols I hope next week we will also get authorization for the league to return because our players are suffering a lot.”

He went: “… everybody is back to normal, Juakali is back, Gikomba operations are ongoing and also politics has returned…so we need to allow these players to be back also.”

The FKF boss decried that continued ban on football has affected more than 18,000 players in the country.

“We’re ready to implement all protocols required and immediately after the Zambia match we will start planning on how we can restart our leagues for our players to earn something because the sponsors have told me they can’t pay when we don’t have a date on when we are resuming.

“I’ll keep pressing the government to allow over 18,000 players to return to action and as FKF we will ensure all the protocols which will be followed on Friday will also be applied once our leagues resume,” Mwendwa told Citizen Digital.

Initially, FKF had hoped for an October restart but this has been made impossible by the government’s recent directive on contact sports further ban and now has reset the month of November as the tentative action-return date.

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COVID-19 kenya Nick Mwendwa government Zambia friendly match FKF Premier League restart

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