There are all sorts of reasons why football teams lost matches, that are mostly to do with a failure of the coach or the players, but sometimes fans are keen to blame bad omens.
Some Kenyans, reflecting on their nation’s 2-0 defeat to Algeria in their opening Afcon 2019 match, think former Prime Minister Raila Odinga is a bad omen. He was in Egypt to watch the match.
Before the game, one Twitter user flagged up the potential problem:
After Sunday’s game people were asking for the president to act. This tweeter said. in both English and Swahili, that he had to do something immediately:
But others have pointed out that Kenyans should focus on the players’ performances first:
Mr Odinga himself did not address the question of his impact. In a post-match tweet he told the team to “keep your heads up and keep going” and goes on to say in Swahili “sliding is not falling”:
