We are on the top floor of Uniafric House along Koinange Street, Nairobi, in a sports club called Presha Engineering Company Gymnasium. It is late afternoon, 1986.
Here, young men and women – and some not so young – work out with weights every day. Weight lifting. Weight training. Body building. Power lifting. And, of course, melting unwanted fat. True to form today, the gym is full; full of people without fame to their names.
Except one man: Mahmoud Abbas. The nation’s best goalkeeper — some will say eastern Africa’s and they won’t provoke an argument — is training. Like his good friend and Harambee Stars colleague of many years, Bobby Ogolla, Abbas is not content with the average twohour training done daily with his team. He needs more.
He pumps iron. “It was in 1979 when I saw this video of Peter Shilton at training,” he is telling me, amid the groaning, granting and hissing. “He was squatting and doing bench press, alone with his wife in his gym. It was in the morning before training with the rest of the team started. I was very impressed. Right away, I took up weight training.”
Abbas is dressed in a tee-shirt and slacks. No shoes. The weights on his squats stand amount to 150 pounds. He will increase them if I allow gaps in my questioning. But he will not get to his maximum poundage because he is not in top condition. “I squat up to 250-pounds. And I bench-press up to 180. But I cannot do that right now.
You know, when I am in top physical condition, I weigh 75 kilos. Now I am 84.”
He is totally committed to weight training, attributing his confidence and strength to it. “In the art of goalkeeping,” he informs me, “size is an important component. See me when I am dressed up and out there: I look big. True, I am big but, more important, I look bigger than I actually am.”
In his day of days, Abbas hurled balls with his hand for up to three quarters of a football pitch – and accurately for good measure. “Weights,” he explains. But our discussion today is not all about weights. It is about his career. Recently, Abbas announced that after the (1987) All Africa Games, he will quit international football and concentrate on his club AFC Leopards until retirement. Quit? Why? “My feelings for this game have gone away. My motivation is gone.”
Abbas is a sentimental person. When he says this, there is no mistaking the emotion behind the words. Now he has abandoned his squats, allowed someone else to use the stand and we are at a corner of the gym where we won’t get in any body’s way.
“I intend to continue with AFC Leopards because they have been good to me and I definitely intend to continue working with Kenya Airways because they are excellent employers. As for the national team, the only motivation I have is the (1987) All Africa Games. Cecafa Challenge Cups has become a waste of time for me. All the countries in the competition fear us.”
He is not in the current national team but is certain about making the selection “when I start training seriously. That will be no problem at all.” He has not played for Leopards this season and, like his friend Bobby, stories about his absence abound.
This makes him wallow in despair, wailing: “Rumours, rumours, rumours!” He explains: “Between December last year and March this year, I was in Jeddah on religious holiday (Hajj). I returned in time to make the Leopards final 16 for the Vital’ O matches. (AFC Leopards defeated Burundi’s Vital’ O 2-1 on aggregate in the second round of the CAF Africa Cup Winners Cup competition before bowing out 2-4 to Zaire’s AS Kalamu in the next). I was also in the squad for the Kalamu matches but, unfortunately, I sustained a groin injury. I was out of the game for quite a while and by the time I was feeling better, the team had hit form in the league.
“Now, it is universal wisdom in football that you don’t change a winning team – unless you are looking for trouble. So, I gladly let our on-form team go on rather than try to force my way into it. The coach understood.
The players understood. But some people cannot. If I had bull-dozed my way into the squad and we lost, they would have had an excellent punch bag to pound. But now we have won and yet they cannot see this truth. People!”
I ask him if he would like to continue squatting and he says no. He will now do bench press. But he wants to talk, for talking, he tells me, is his greatest strength.
“My great friend J.J. (Masiga) is the greatest striker in this country. He thrives on challenge in a country which does not offer him any. He motivates others by example. Bobby Ogolla is our best stopper and you can see him all over the field helping out at vital times. There will not be another Bobby if this one goes – take that from me.
I used to train very hard,” he told me. “After a rigorous training season, all players in the squad would shoot at me. Let’s say, I faced 20 penalties. Sometimes, only five would go in. After 20 were taken, I sometimes would ask my teammates to shoot the best 10. My success rate was high
“As for me, I am good at talking. I encourage my teammates by telling them we will win even when we are in difficulties. I admit I sometimes use nasty words but talking is my strength. I also talk opposing forwards into losing their tempers. Talking also gives me relief from tension. In a football match, I talk a lot.”
So we continue talking because Abbas really wants to. The gym is a bee-hive of activity. People are looking at us, those working at the weights, but seeing us take too long, they remember they have work to do. They resume. Good atmosphere. Abbas had a great record.
In 1982, when AFC Leopards won the League title unbeaten – but lost later in the season – he had conceded a mere seven goals. In that year, Leopards won the East and Central Africa Club Cup for the second time with Abbas not conceding a single goal during the tournament.
That included a penalty shoot-out in a semi-final against Gor Mahia. He parried all the spot kicks as a stunned nation watched and listened.
He was at it again in Uganda, saving Zimbabwean and Ugandan penalties en route to an epic victory which he hails the greatest win of his career. He was captain.
“J.J. told me: “You will never play a game like this one again.” Other team mates thought I had some sort of magic.”
That was after Harambee Stars subjected Uganda Cranes to their first ever championship defeat at home. “See, these were great games. But I now know that success is easily forgotten and failure keenly remembered. And yet we are not professionals. We don’t get paid for this. Our matches in a single tournament gross Kshs3.5 million.
We get nothing. And when we lose, they say we have been bribed.”
Success is easily forgotten and failure keenly remembered – Abbas is harping on this point. “J.J.’s knee is still very bad and I don’t know if he is coming again or if he will even be the J.J. we know. But the country seems satisfied.
All those great matches for our country are forgotten.
But lucky him, he is a doctor. His life won’t burn. Bobby is serving a suspension, in the prime of his life. At 28, he is at an age where you are experienced enough not to be cowed by anything and yet not too old to retire. But that’s it. All those matches he played and won for this country are a matter for history, finished by this sort of departure. Did you ask me why I am losing motivation? When I think about these things.”
A short sweat-drenched man comes up to our corner to pick a bar. He says: “You people have been talking for a long time!” Yes, we agree and politely encourage him to pick up his bar and get on with this training. He does, and Abbas can tell me of his vision for the future.
Abbas is going to take his shower and then change. He bids the people around him goodbye, starting with the gym coach Chris Njoma. He turns to me for the last time and says: “I am going to watch AFC Leopards versus Hearts of Oak.” When not a Leopards player, Mahmoud Abbas is a Leopards fan
“I will definitely not play in the East and Central African Club Cup for Leopards. It has been my policy never to play when I am not in good condition and I don’t see myself getting it by then. But I will be available for the club during the Champions Club matches. Then I will aim for the summit of my form in preparation for the All-Africa Games. After that, it will be commitments for Leopards only.
And when I retire completely, I will go into business. I have in mind a shop for sports goods. I tell you: football management, not for me! This December, I intend to get married. She is a Mombasa girl like I am a Mombasa boy. You know Said Ali, the FIFA ref? Yes, his brother’s daughter. This December, it’s all planned and arranged.”
And with that announcement, Abbas, returning the smiles of the many people honoured to be training with the best goalkeeper of his generation, walks over to the inclined bench to do several 10-rep sets of 100 pounds. Soon, he is sweating again. “Enough for today,” he tells me. “I am going. I will see you another time.”
It is early evening now. The daily ritual of lights at dusk has been repeated over the city we see out through the window. But in the gym, there is activity that is almost frenetic:
Nobody notices other things. Abbas is going to take his shower and then change. He bids the people around him goodbye, starting with the gym coach Chris Njoma. He turns to me for the last time and says: “I am going to watch AFC Leopards versus Hearts of Oak.” When not a Leopards player, Mahmoud Abbas is a Leopards fan.
FOOTNOTE: In 1982 Mahmoud Abbas made himself something of a superstar by saving just about any penalty that came his way. Though the magic faded steadily in succeeding seasons, the legend lives. How did he get to save whatever Kenyans, Ugandans, Zimbabweans and Zambians could fire at him?
“I used to train very hard,” he told me. “After a rigorous training season, all players in the squad would shoot at me. Let’s say, I faced 20 penalties. Sometimes, only five would go in. After 20 were taken, I sometimes would ask my team mates to shoot the best 10.
My success rate was high.”
Is there any particular technique for saving a penalty? Disappointingly no.
“It’s pure guesswork and luck. But there are some clues. For instance, any player who looks at me once he places the ball stands a good chance of having his shot saved. The eye tells a lot.” “In the great majority of cases, I noticed that whenever a player placed the ball and looked in one side of me, he would shoot in the opposite direction of his look. When he shot, I flew the opposite way. Many, many times, my guess was right.”
Will he reclaim that form? “I will need tremendous effort. It would be hard. And I mean hard. That’s the game.”