Keeping cards close to their chest works to detriment of our coaches

When it comes to keeping their cards close to the chest, Ugandan football coaches have no equals. It appears the overarching narratives that exist in our culture about pre-match comments from coaches fly in the face of the times. There is a latent queerness about the fact that Ugandan football fans have been conditioned to expect people in the dugout to be guarded about their football philosophy. 

Fans of the beautiful game in this part of the world have allowed and fostered the creation of cultures distinct from best practices. This is in no small part thanks to the effect and affect of coaches of legendary standing à la Otti. As such, Ugandan fans are unwilling to submit to what most people considered normal.

Take the tactics explainers that coaches plying their trade in the higher reaches of European club football are now accustomed to delivering on a board in the full glare of a close-up shot. 

This week, your columnist stumbled upon a comment where one viewer labelled Enzo Maresca's forthrightness in one such tactics explainer with Sky Sports a radical proposition.

Is the Chelsea coach not giving away too much, the viewer—with naive bewilderment—wrote in a comment to the video clip a third party endorsement had posted up on Twitter (again, no-one calls it X!). No prizes for guessing the nationality of the bewildered viewer. 

Our Ugandan viewer found it counterproductive for Maresca to divulge granular details around how to set up his side against an adversary in possession using either a 4-3-3 system or a 4-2-3-1 system.

Why would the Chelsea head coach talk about the benefits of playing with inverted fullbacks and how he uses a goalkeeper in a defensive line? Was opening up about how his team methodically moves to create space and handle the defensive transition a particularly smart idea, the Ugandan thundered on in his lengthy post.

The reluctance of Ugandans to wade into this matter should not belie the fact that they, through no fault of their own, would express alarm in a not manner dissimilar from their compatriot who became the butt of all jokes on Twitter.

That is simply how they have been conditioned. This does not preclude the fact that such an inclination is so yesteryear.

During his trophy-laden reign at KCCA FC, Mike Mutebi was pretty forthright about his team's philosophy. He christened it “our way.” In summary, it pivoted around throwing the kitchen sink at opponents.

Metaphorically, of course. Many opponents knew what was coming at them, literally, and yet they were it was hard for them not to feel powerless and despairing in its face.

Mutebi, though, was and remains an outlier. The vast bulk of coaches that butter their bread in our banana republic still cherish the old school approach of maintaining a strategic silence.

Make no mistake, such an approach may occasionally come good in fits and starts by catching rivals unawares. For the most part, though, it remains just that—a relic of the past. 

In fact, there are a couple of useful things that being effortlessly relaxed and forthright about tactics can help pull off. The obvious one is it reinforces the message in the minds of an important constituency—the players.

Less obvious but no less important is its conversational currency. The forthrightness is truly worth its weight in gold in the sense that it triggers debates that keep the subject of discussion in the headlines. For better or worse.

Conversely, a strategic silence whittles down the chances of that that it intends to shield against scrutiny dominating the news agenda.

This is precisely how European club football repeatedly manages to steal a march on its second cousin, the much-maligned Uganda Premier League.

The conversational currency of the latter is minuscule for the most part because its coaches do not talk a good talk. You cannot publicise something for which there is scant information.
 
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