In winning the Kenya Premier League with Tusker FC last week, Paul Nkata added material to a rich sub-chapter of this region’s football: The influential role played by Ugandan coaches in Kenyan football over three decades.

It is a one-way street where these technical experts always travel from Kampala to Nairobi and rarely the other way round.

There have been a number of Ugandan football coaches but three of Nkata’s predecessors have a towering reputation — Robert Kiberu, David Otti and Abbey Nasur.

Kiberu, a small and quiet man who let his actions speak for themselves, started this contribution in the most dramatic fashion in 1979.

Kenya Breweries, as Tusker FC was known then, had won the 1978 Kenya Premier League and thus qualified to represent Kenya in the following year’s East and Central Africa Club Championship, organised by the Confederation of East and Central Africa Football Associations (Cecafa).

The tournament was in Mogadishu, Somalia. Kenya Breweries’ patron then was Kenneth Matiba, a former chairman of the Kenya Football Federation who had ceded leadership to Dan Owino, a former provincial commissioner and ambassador, in acrimonious circumstances. Matiba, an avid outdoorsman and great sports lover, was chairman of Kenya Breweries Ltd, the football club’s sponsors.

So bad was the blood between the two that Breweries FC simply declined to travel to Mogadishu for the national assignment. And this, at the very last minute. KFF turned to Gor Mahia, the league runners-up and staunch allies of Matiba’s in the fractious world of Kenya football politics. Gor Mahia turned down the offer.

A frantic Owino lurched on to third-placed Abaluhya FC — later known as AFC Leopards — and to his relief, Leopards accepted just in time to fly to Mogadishu and walk onto the playing field.

Robert Kiberu

The rest is history. Leopards, without preparations after the long Christmas break, won the tournament before an astonished East Africa. Robert Kiberu, their newly-appointed coach from Uganda, played a significant role in persuading the club leadership that the gamble was worth it.

He returned from Mogadishu a hero and embarked on reshaping Leopards’ play into his preferred style — a ruthless attacking mentality that placed great emphasis on physical fitness. In Kiberu’s philosophy, there was little space for aesthetics, only results. And he got them, winning the national league and with it three back to back regional titles with AFC Leopards in 1982, 1983 and 1984.

Many of his players, such as JJ Masiga, Wilberforce Mulamba, Josephat Murila and the penalty-saving goalkeeper, Mahmoud Abbas, are an integral part of Kenya’s football lore. Kiberu too became a legend in Kenya.

Kiberu was a former captain of the Uganda national team, the Cranes, which he later coached. He was an outstanding talent scout and as coach of the feeder youth team to the Cranes, discovered and nurtured some of Uganda’s best footballers, the ones who would narrowly lose to Ghana in the final of the 1978 Africa Nations Cup under Peter Okee.

He brought the same qualities to the Kenyan game and players who worked under him, almost to a man, described him as a father figure who understood the fears and aspirations of young people well. Kiberu’s tenure at AFC Leopards, perhaps the golden era of the club’s history, ended in 1985 after the team lost 0-2 to archrivals Gor Mahia in that year’s Cecafa Club Cup in Sudan.

He returned to club football in Uganda and was active until his death in 1990 at the age of 54.

David Otti

David Otti won the Cecafa Club with Gor Mahia in 1981 in Nairobi. His tenure was much shorter than Kiberu’s, and the two favoured contrasting styles of play.

Whereas Kiberu preferred the direct, hard charging and results-oriented approach, Otti went for the “happiness football” beloved of Gor Mahia’s exuberant fans. The team was exhibitionist and the word “magic” was never far from the lips of fans.

Like Kiberu, Otti returned home to concentrate on club football, leaving behind a following that still respected him and welcomed him back whenever he visited despite the fact that he was fired from his job.

He had a sad ending to his life, first having his leg amputated as a result of suffering from diabetes and finally succumbing to the disease in 2011 at the age of 71.

Abbey Nasur

Abbey Nasur, who coached Maragoli (later Imara) is better known as a player than as a coach. He came to Kenya under desperate circumstances.

He was a prisons officer in Uganda during Idi Amin’s rule. When Amin was overthrown in 1979, many Ugandans directed their vengeance at his security forces — soldiers, policemen and prisons officers. Nasur fled to Kenya and was given a life line by the legendary Joe Kadenge who took him in.

In gratitude, Nasur played for Kadenge’s Imara FC and helped nurture young players, including Joe’s son Francis. But a man who was the valued right winger for the Uganda Cranes in the epic 1978 tournament in Ghana was too big for Imara and was soon snapped up by Gor Mahia.

Still, when he was done with playing, Nasur returned to Imara as coach, never having forgotten the generosity of the team’s manager, Kadenge.

He returned to Uganda but routinely visits Kenya.

Nkata

Soon after Tusker were crowned champions last week, they arranged a visit to Uganda to, as the team put it, “pay homage to the country of our coach.”

Paul Nkata richly deserves this tribute because not only did he win the Premier League trophy, but also the second tier Gotv Shield as well. Winning a double in his first season at Tusker is all the more remarkable because Tusker, as Kenya’s best financed club, had failed in previous seasons despite hiring top coaches.

Nkata was snapped up from Premier League side Muhoroni Youth, a team with no hope of winning the title. Some football pundits wondered what Tusker managers saw in him. The 56 year-old former Sports Club Villa, Express FC and Uganda Cranes player seemed as unlikely a prospect as anyone could think of. But Tusker managers must have taken note of his good results with average players.

Unknown to many, Nkata played, just briefly, for Kenya’s first professional side, Volcano United, in the mid-80s before embarking on a coaching career that has brought him thus far.

In a media interview last week, Nkata acknowledged as much: “I knew from the very beginning that I was going to go places with Tusker. What did I say on my appointment? I said I was here to win trophies. If I had players at Nairobi City Stars and at Muhoroni and they were not as good as these ones, and yet I managed to make them perform well, why not these ones?”

Nkata’s ultimate test as a coach will be getting past tough West and North African opponents in the CAF Champions League next year.

There have been reports that he could leave Tusker for another club next season but his two-year contract ends December next year.