The Sports Disputes Tribunal will on Tuesday make a ruling on whether relegated clubs Muhoroni Youth and Sofapaka will be included in this season’s SportPesa Premier League.
The two clubs were early this month relegated by the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) for failing to comply with Club Licensing requirements.
FKF chairman Nick Mwendwa indicated that even after adjusting time frames for submission of documents, both clubs failed to show proof of any other form of income besides the monthly grants by the league sponsors.
He also revealed that the two clubs are notorious for failing to pay their players, and have a number of unresolved cases where their former players claim they are still owed money.
Muhoroni and Sofapaka have however dismissed the federation’s move as malicious and took the matter up with the tribunal with the backing of league managers.
SPL went on to release this season’s league fixtures, which was to kick-off over the weekend and included the two clubs. FKF however responded by suspending the February 11 kick-off date until the current stalemate is resolved.
This year’s top flight is meant to comprise of 18 teams, and lower tier sides Vihiga and KCB stand to benefit admission to the top flight should Muhoroni and Sofapaka lose the case.
In this regard, FKF and the league organisers have scheduled a Joint Executive Committee meeting set for Thursday to work on modalities of running this year’s top flight league.
Speaking to nation.co.ke on Monday, SPL Chief Executive Officer Jack Oguda assured that the new SPL fixtures will be out by the end of this week, and that the league will commence on February 25 as planned.
He also dismissed reports indicating that the league’s kick off has been pushed to March 5, saying that his office will work along the timelines provided by the tribunal last week.
“We are working within the time frame that the tribunal gave last week. They said that the league shouldn’t start later than February 25 and we plan to adhere to that. We are also waiting to see what the court will rule concerning the two clubs before we can issue the complete fixtures. By end of this week the fixtures should be out,” he said.
Daily Nation