It is rare for me to nod along to something said by Fufa president Moses Magogo. But that is something for another day. His recent—and, let’s be honest, questionable—attempt to smuggle a special football budget in Parliament has actually revealed a few interesting ideas buried in his paperwork.
One proposal in particular caught my attention. He wants to change how institutional clubs, like URA or Police, contribute to Ugandan football. Instead of competing directly against community clubs in the league, he suggests they should shift gears and become sponsors for those very community teams.
And you know what? I think he is onto something here. It starts to make a lot of sense when you look at the bigger picture.
Take URA FC, for example. They are four-time league champions. On paper, that’s impressive. But what’s their real legacy in Ugandan football? Do they have a genuine, passionate fanbase that lives and breathes for the club? The honest answer is a big NO!
The truth is, clubs like URA, UPPC, UPDF, and Police—teams funded by taxpayers’ money—often feel like leeches in our football structure. They compete against clubs that are built from the ground up, investing heart and soul into the game, while these institutional sides mainly just exist. Aside from offering jobs to a handful of people within their own structures, what do they really add to the sport’s development?
Think about UPDF FC, a club that has an annual budget exceeding Shs 1.5bn. They play week in, week out in an empty stadium up in Bombo barracks. Now, imagine if they flipped the script. Instead of being this distant, impersonal entity, what if they sponsored and supported Bombo FC, a real community club? Suddenly, they would be investing in the local identity, and the people of Bombo might actually feel a connection. They would have something to rally behind, and the Shs 1.5bn could transform football in the community.
When you get down to it, most of these institutional clubs are really just exercises in corporate social responsibility for their parent organizations. They are not football clubs in the passionate, community sense. The real work of developing the game—cultivating talent, building local pride, creating those electric matchday atmospheres—is being done by the community clubs.
And let’s be real: it is naturally hard for fans to warm up to these institutional teams. Take Police FC. It is hard to be both an authority figure that society sometimes fears and a beloved football club. The same goes for URA. I mean, even in the Bible, tax collectors were not exactly popular. It is just human nature.
Now, to be fair, I’m not saying these clubs bring nothing. They do provide some financial stability to the league and employ quite a few individuals. But football is not just about transactions and payrolls; it’s about emotion, identity, and engagement. And without that heartfelt connection to fans, these institutional clubs will always feel like outsiders looking in. They’re in the game, but they’re not really of it.
Magogo’s idea, surprisingly, might just be a step toward changing that.
The author is a football investor and SC Villa President Emeritus.
