Five-a-side football and tournaments are slowly gaining momentum in the capital city with footballers shifting focus to the shorter version of the football game.
The shorter version of the beautiful game is a football-based version of mini-football, in which each team fields five players for a duration of seven or ten minutes.
Other differences from football include a smaller pitch, smaller goals, and a reduced game duration.
Famous Five-a-side tournaments include KOT 5-A-SIDE, Road To Anfield, Left Foot, Road To Spain and the recent addition Tucheze 5 Aside just to mention a few.
Across the country, entrepreneurs have taken the opportunity to flourish in the sporting business despite its uncertainties.
They have come up with turfs to hold tournaments and also training for different teams, and in almost every corner of the city, if it’s not a Wines and Spirits business then it’s probably going to be a football turf in the hood.
The football turfs most fanfare is during evening hours when the floodlights are lit and the quest for a champion gets underway.
During these tournaments, you can see disparate groups of middle-aged men (or women, but rarely mixed) wearing the washed-out, tightly stretched jerseys of their heroes, or worse, their youth.
The tournaments act out as dreams that originated in childhood. Scoring in a cup final, or, more likely, a lucky last-minute toe-poke that wins an otherwise turgid match. There are opportunities here for all imaginations. And there’s nothing quite like it.
Our writer caught up with a few organisers of the Five-a-side football tournaments, and we had the opportunity to sit down with Solomon Kahiga who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Tucheze 5 Aside tournament.
According to Kahiga Tucheze, 5 Aside football extravaganzas is a Trimonthly Football event that had its first 4 editions taking place at Mount Kenya University Indoors arena.
However, with the tournament growing, the event organisers have made the decision that the other editions are to be held in various universities and colleges locally, to give the youth and more so students given a taste of this beautiful game.
“Our target population is university students who despite having spectacular talent are faced and traumatized by the challenges of today; mental health issues, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide,” Kahiga said.
According to Kahiga the Tucheze 5 Aside was started back in February 2021 for the mere fun of enjoying the most loved sport in the world, football with their aim being that of surpassing the already established tournaments like KOT and Left foot.
“We are taking each day at a time because our goal is to be the tournament of choice for either current crop of players or retired players to network and keep fit, we also have an idea of introducing a veteran category where the old can come out and showcase their vintage talent,” Kahiga said.
Due to the growing fan base and love for football, Tucheze 5 Aside has grown both in the size of the teams, fans and participants.
The tournament has so far attracted over six universities and a fan base of over 5000 with the recent one hosted at KCA University.
Kahiga further revealed the next edition of Tucheze 5 Aside (T5A) will take place on 5th February 2022 at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) grounds with Kenya Premier League stars expected to grace the tournament.
Eugene Mukangula of AFC Leopards who captained his team to a podium finish during the inaugural of the tournament is expected to play alongside James Kinyanjui of Wazito FC and Shami Kibwana of Tusker FC in an all-star selection.
Kahiga revealed the inclusion of the KPL players is to motivate the upcoming players to work hard each and every day to be able to achieve even greater goals than those of their mentors.
