This is how Express FC can turn its half empty glass into a half full one

Pius Kaggwa, one of Mbale Heroes's attackers, had just rattled the woodwork at the death after beating the despairing dive of Michael Kagiri in the Express FC goal following a mazy run.

The TV camera panned to capture the reaction of the home crowd at Nakivubo. Viewers, like your humble columnist, were met with a shot of a stand with a ghostly presence. 

Call it choosing to see the glass as half empty all you want, but it was hard to greet with a shrug the abjectly poor attendance of Express FC's 2-1 win over Mbale Heroes.

It is necessary to establish the boundaries that ensured that this was not your ordinary top flight football league match. Competitive football was, for one, returning to Nakivubo after the stadium closed its doors for a protracted period to get a fresh coat of paint.

Elsewhere, Mbale Heroes, a giant slayer in years gone by, was marking a return to the Uganda Premier League (UPL) after a nearly two-decade hiatus.

The poor attendance, more than anything, highlights how Ugandan football continues to dither over a way out of the mess. With fans perpetually turning their backs on what is supposed to be local club football’s prized asset, fears that the game is stagnating if not in terminal decline should not be dismissed out of hand. 

Two things that represent a fundamental threat to the fortunes of local club football were spotlighted by the no-show of fans at Nakivubo this past week.

Firstly, there is no denying the fact that the prospect that local club football holds out for its intended audience is not as appealing as some would like us to believe. There is an almost palpable lack of star dust across the board.

We have seen the sort of impact that star dust can have on crowd sizes after Andre Onana, Manchester United's Cameroonian net-minder, had a sizeable number of Ugandan fans eat out of his palms during the immediate past international break.

Ugandan club football is of course light years away from producing a player with something remotely close to the star dust that Onana commands. Manchester United fans, whose impulsive nature sparks flashes of temper that concern even their rivals, will admit that Onana's use of feet is hard to overlook in an era when net-minders are expected to execute the role of a false five. 

Since the aforesaid role comes with a dose of the good, the bad, and ugly, almost equal measure, Onana is pretty much a hero today and a zero tomorrow. But the star dust is unquestionably there. In Ugandan club football, though, this vital ingredient (i.e. star dust) is conspicuous by its absence.

This is, in part, because responsible authorities have failed to crack the code of building stars. Thanks to this, clubs like Express FC tend to bank on washed up players from the yesteryear to get by. This means that the Red Eagles, as they indeed managed against their visitors from Mbale on Monday, can scrape by, barely. 

During its heyday, Express FC used to replenish its resources by buying and aggressively marketing either established stars or stars in the making.

Ugandan club football has fallen on such lean times that the two aforementioned options are not quite accessible as easily as they used to be.

While it may feel uncomfortably confrontational, it would do Ugandan club football a world of good to seek answers to what has occasioned the thinning of the two options that, in a sense, turned the Red Eagles into mukwano gwabanji (i.e., the friend of many).

The excuse of Wankulukuku, their home of a little over three decades, and other football ‘cathedrals’ being prohibitively far away from the reach of the Red Army—as Express FC fans are collectively known—does not quite cut it. Nakivubo is domiciled in downtown Kampala, a hotbed of Express FC fans.

So, I ask again, what precipitated the poor attendance on Monday? The second fundamental threat this column chooses to illuminate hazards a guess as to why fans choose to stay away. Not only is the game shorn of star dust, but also marketing of the same is desperately lacking.  

Addressing the two deficits might not quite have Nakivubo packed to the rafters for Express FC's home games this season simply because we are not talking of a magic wand. What it can do, and your humble columnist posits this with no fear of contradiction, is help us see the glass as half full; no half empty.