Charles Nyende

8 September 2010

Nairobi — Weary Harambee Stars returned home early on Wednesday morning from West Africa after a 48-hour delay a team in disarray, with a senior official blaming an ego tussle between two senior players for their 0-1 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier loss to Guinea Bissau.

"We had a problem because our two senior players, McDonald Mariga and Dennis Oliech, had bad blood between them," Hussein Swaleh, the new Football Kenya Limited technical committee chairman who was the head of delegation, claimed on arrival in Nairobi.

'There have been differences'

"I realised there was a problem after the match and I held separate meetings with the two players. Apparently, there have been differences between the two for a while now."

Mariga, of Inter Milan, and Oliech (Auxerre) did not fly back with the team after taking connecting flights to Europe from West Africa and could not be reached for comment.

But in sharp contradiction to Swaleh's sentiments, coach Twahir Muhiddin said there was no such rift.

"I do not know anything about his talk of differences between the two players. When they played in our friendly against Tanzania in Dar es Salaam last month they were close together. I did not see anything different in Bissau," Muhiddin said.

He also refuted claims that there was a rift between the players following the last-minute appointment of Oliech as captain, replacing Robert Mambo.

"Before we left for Bissau, the players met and selected Mambo as their captain in line with our policy of getting the most capped player," said Muhiddin.

"As a technical bench we consult before making the final decision.

"We discussed with Mambo but since he was not on the starting line-up we agreed to pick Oliech, who had been suggested by the players alongside Mariga to be Mambo's assistant.

"We settled on Oliech because he had more caps than Mariga."