Nairobi United’s tale from estate kickabout to Super League champions

Nairobi United Football Club, now set to represent Kenya in the continental Confederation Cup alongside Kenya Premier League winners Kenya Police, has shocked many in the local football scene.

Securing its first ever promotion to Kenya’s top-tier league and winning a cup competition where it slayed giants like Tusker, KCB and Kakamega Homeboyz before beating Gor Mahia in the final, Nairobi United is in cloud nine.

“The original Nairobi United intention was to shed off ‘vitambi’ (potbellies),” the club’s chairman Samwel Born Maina posted on Facebook on Friday.

“Then we transformed it into passion and grew to become one of the best football clubs in Kenya.”

After the Thursday date at State House, Nairobi United Football Club is set to get a bus from President William Ruto, who also pledged to inject Sh2 million into each of the five income-generating projects the players are engaged in.

Super League champions

If Dr Ruto keeps his word, that will be another chapter in the seven-year-old club.

“The club started off in 2018 by Masinde Muliro University alumni, a group of friends who wanted to just keep fit and keep on socialising. But as time progressed, we realised that we are attracting a lot of interest from young people who also came to support us on the pitch. As weeks went by, these young men became more than the true intention of the group,” Mr Maina told the Daily Nation on Saturday. 

“Because now they were very fit and they were playing well, we decided to register ourselves in a football league. So, we started off from a very low league, which is the regional league. And we have risen through the ranks over the years and we now became champions to join the Kenyan Premier League,” he added.

The beginnings were not easy. Mr Maina, a former Daily Nation reporter, who now runs his own media agency, had to dig into his pockets to support the players.

“I used to provide for them fare and to provide for them incentives so that they could come on the pitch. I picked guys who had given up hope on playing soccer and gave them hope that everything is possible. For instance, the goalkeeper, Chacha Maneno, had already given up issues to do with playing because he felt that football in Kenya does not reward. But I insisted that we have to utilise his talent and make use of it. As time went by, he became very much integral in our squad, and right now he is our first-choice goalkeeper,” said Mr Maina.

In 2024, Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja chipped in through his foundation.

“The club chairman, Born Maina, had struggled with the team for a long time, until I met him and told him, ‘Let me take some of this off your shoulder and make sure the youths don’t worry about where they will get food. Let them focus on football.’ If we professionalise our sports in this country, we have so much talent,” said Mr Sakaja at the Thursday State House event.

Mr Sakaja added that the club needed motivation.

“When I took up these young men, many were not confident about themselves [and] their own lives. We take time to mentor these young people that they succeed not just on the pitch but off the pitch. They have gone beyond what they thought,” he said.

“Most teams are supported by corporates: betting firms and all. For this one, it’s our efforts with our friends. And we defeated all of those with millions because this country is not about those with millions of shillings in their accounts, but those with millions of ideas in their minds and in their hearts and the dreams that they have.”

Winning mentality

“Governor Sakaja came on board 10 months ago, and he has since driven us even higher,” said Mr Maina.

Nairobi United’s coach Nicholas Muyoti, a former Harambee Stars player, told the Daily Nation in June that a change in mentality lifted the club’s fortunes.

“When I joined the team, I told them that we have to be confident and have a winning mentality,” said the coach, who joined the team in January.

To empower the players economically, they are divided into five groups named after the Big Five animals — the elephant, rhino, buffalo, leopard and lion. 

“Each has a unique business: poultry, welding, gaming, selling clothes. These are all groups that are trying to empower themselves,” said Mr Maina.

“That is why the President was very much impressed and promised to inject Sh10 million shillings into these ventures – Sh2 million to each group – so that we can grow economically. And we told the President that it will be an accountable process. He demanded that we get him dividends as soon as the businesses flourish. And we promised that indeed, six months from now, we hope to deliver the first lot of dividends to the President at State House,” he added.

President Ruto said that, going by the team’s line-up, it represents the face of Kenya. He added that its rise is not a matter of money because it managed to beat well-resourced teams in the past run.

“Your team [has been in existence] since 2018, just the other day, right? But you’re here. Why? Because you are committed, you are determined, you have refused to give up, you are on it, you’re focused, and that is why you have succeeded. That is the spirit...of what makes winners and what makes success,” the President said.

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