EDITORIAL: Police must up their game and save Kasarani for the finals of CHAN

The much-awaited CHAN match between Kenya and Zambia has become the subject of furious debate because of the crowd trouble sparked by fans during the Sunday Harambee Stars game against Morocco.

On Sunday football-mad fans, some with tickets and others ticketless, overran Kasarani stadium security and poured into the facility, much to the chagrin of the local organising committee and the Confederation of African Football.

Following the fiasco, CAF has now ordered that only 27,000 fans will be allowed into Kasarani on Sunday, despite the stadium having a capacity of 48,000.

All the mess boils down to hopeless policing and the inability to manage even the smallest of crowds.

Whatever passes for our police force has no capacity to handle any situation with a positive outcome.

Football matches are emotional boiling pots and nobody expects fans to use their heads. Worse, the youthful fans live in a context in which the relationship with the police is at rock bottom.

In England, notorious in the past for hooliganism, such major matches are manned by a heavy and intimidating police deployment.

The police must up their game and save Kasarani for the finals of CHAN.

Quote of the day: “Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.” —German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht died on August 14, 1956