Kenyan premier league chairman Mr. Ambrose Rachier has written to World Leagues Forum seeking their backing against FIFA’s support for Football Kenya Federation’s plan to expand the topflight to 18-teams from current 16 starting 2017 season.
The move comes days after FKF received a letter from FIFA dated November 8, 2016 supporting their quest for expansion, as the custodian of the Kenyan game. The FIFA’s weighty communication was in response to a FKF letter dated October 19th which sought clarity over the protracted battle between them and KPL Limited regarding composition of the league.
KPL has supported its current 16-team status and has over the past two seasons thwarted FKF’s push to have it accommodate two more teams, citing among other things financial constraints.
In the letter to WLF seen by Soka25east.com KPL is accusing FIFA of being “seriously misinformed and misadvised” on the true situation in Kenyan football.
“The key issue is that FKF is arbitrarily insisting that all previous agreements involving FIFA, CAF, FKF and KPL over the last decade now be ignored and that the KPL relegation/promotion format since 2007 be immediately changed barely a week before the final matches of 2016 season. Moreover, one of the likey additional club to be promoted belongs to the FKF president,” the letter to the Mr. Richard Scudamore, Executive Chairman, Premier League, Head of the WLF Steering Group dated November 11 reads in part.
KPL is raising seven issues, key among them 2004-05 FIFA-led normalization process which passed a series of agreements to reduce KPL to an optimum size of 16, and was endorsed and ratified in Cairo by senior representatives of FIFA, CAF, the Kenyan government, FKF and KPL.
They are asking why FIFA’s new reform-focused leadership would support the “arbitrary reversal” of the gains of a “decade-long reform process.”
KPL is thus seeking “urgent solidarity, support and intervention” from WLF in urging FIFA to reconsider its “uncritical” support of FKF, to protect the principle of the autonomy of professional leagues and to ensure FKF “upholds the rule of law, adheres to basic principles of sports integrity,” and “especially respects the many previous reform measures and agreements signed or facilitated by FIFA over the last decade, including in particular the FKF/KPL agreement signed last year.”
The letter was endorsed this morning by all KPL clubs at KPL’s Emergency Governing Council meeting in Nairobi.
Below is the KPL’s letter to WLF:
FIFA’s response to FKF:
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