ADDIS ABABA – Mekele Saba Inderta will begin the second round of the Ethiopian Premier League, EPL, taking the top spot on 35 points from 15 games, five points clear from the second placed Sidama Coffee. Mekele are in the driving seat beating all their nine opponents in a row. This is rarely seen in the elite league. When they managed to beat Bahir Dar city and Jimma Abajifar by the same 1-0 margin to complete the first round, it was clear that they have consolidated their position. The defending champions Jima didn’t fare well all through.
One serious problem from the start was the departure of their cup winning Coach Gebremedhin Haile. His departure also brought one additional crisis to Jima: most of the players opted to move to Mekele along with their coach. So for experienced coach Gebre the team formation at Mekele was not that problematic. He simply synchronized the Jimma and the former Mekele players in the short span of time. He did that and showed his muscle by enjoying nine successive wins. If Gebre succeeds to take title this will be the second time in two years.
He will also be the first coach to take title two times in a row with different sides. The far away third Saint George who are adrift of 9 points from the league leaders will have their first away game of the second round against Bahir Dar the coming Sunday. This will be a crucial encounter for the record 14 times EPL winners. The match between Mekele Saba Inderta and St. George at Mekele international stadium Bahir Dar joined the elite league at the start of this season but they managet to create upset by beating St. George in their first appearance at the Addis Ababa stadium.
Their coach Pawlos Getachew, widely known as Mango, has shown strength until the end of the first round. The other two sides, South Police and Shire Sihul who joined the elite league together with Bahir Dar City are struggling for survival. The record shows that South Police stand 14th with 12 points from 15 games while Shire Sihul are 15th on 11 points from the same 15 games. At the end of the first round Dedebit are the bottom side on 4 points from 15 games. With this trend the one time Ethiopian Premier League champions Dedebit are highly likely to relegate at the end of this season.
Dedebit won title in 2013. Same year, they have also contributed key players for the national football team who qualified for the African Nations Cup final for the first time in 31 years. What happens this season? The financial constraint led them to this abysmal low record, according to the clubs official announcement. They (Dedebit) were based in Addis for nearly 10 years but this year they moved to Tigray to minimize the expenses but it didn’t help.
Meanwhile, the country’s football governing body, Ethiopian Football Federation, EFF, made a thorough assessment of the first round on Wednesday along with the EPL participating clubs. Playing the home and away matches in venues registered by the participating sides were seen as progress. Last year Fasil City, Mekele and some teams from the South played their home matches outside of their city. Mekele and Fasil used the Addis Ababa stadium as their home venues. All these were done as a result of cowed disturbance but this season all clubs hosted their opponents in their home turf. Improvements were made after the St. George-Hawassa City encounter here at the Addis Ababa stadium was interrupted following the cowed disturbance. Right after that the federation decided the game to be replayed the next day in a closed stadium. No crowed disturbance has been registered in the wake of that. Despite this progress, crowed disturbance remained a curse. An unexpected crowed disturbance was created during the fund raising match. Why and how that violence disturbance happened? There were two friendly matches at the Addis Ababa stadium. The first was between Coffee and Sidama Coffee and the second was between St. George and Adama City to raise fund for the construction of the Renaissance Dam, known as River Abay. When the first match drew to a close, the St. George and Coffee fans began exchanging bad words with each other.
When words were transcended in to stone throwing the violence took a different picture. Stone throwing continued in an alarming intensity. The security forces were not able to control. Many were hurt but casualty was not reported. Property were damaged over 30 people were reportedly injured. One can conclude from this that though the sharp and severe decision of the federation forced all club fans to go back to their senses and respect the fair-play rule in the wake of that incident, disturbance remains to follow damaging trend. During the evaluation, the EFF strongly warned that all sides taking part in the competition not to involve in any kind of violence in or outside of the stadium.
Herald March 12/2019
BY SOLOMON BEKELE
