Timbe blended vintage era tactics with modern trends 

I was preparing to write my column on two former football administrators, Abdul Ali Mubarak and Hajji Mohammad Kisambira, who passed away a few weeks ago, when I got news of the passing of Uganda Revenue Authority (URA FC) head coach Sam Timbe. He was 69 years.

Both Mubarak and Kisambira passed away silently, and few knew about their deaths. But the two men dedicated their time and money to football for decades.

Hajji Kisambira used his energy and financial support to support SC Villa in the 1980s, while Mubarak’s administrative prowess was the reason football remained vibrant in Lugazi.

Timbe’s death on Sunday, August 20, came as a shock. I thought it only fitting that I should write an obituary for this great man. I last talked to Timbe in 2011 when I profiled him, and since then I have been seeing the press-shy coach from a distance.

It was in 1976 that I first saw Timbe as a goalkeeper for Coffee FC, which he had joined two years earlier. This was the Uganda Cup final against Gangama FC. Although Gangama carried the day after winning the post-match penalty shoot-out thanks to the heroics of their goalkeeper, Rashid Bwire, the game launched Timbe’s career as an elite stopper.

As I always say, many footballers in that era (1970s and 1980s) were unlucky to win national team caps due to a tendency by coaches to keep the same team.

Timbe remained a bench player the few times he was summoned to the Uganda Cranes squad, and yet he was always at the top of his game while appearing for Coffee.

The 1981 Uganda Cup title remained the only major silverware he achieved in his 10-year playing career, which stretched from 1974 to 1984. It was cut short by an injury to his left arm that forced him onto the sidelines.

COACHING HEROICS

It didn’t take long for Coffee to realise that they could still utilize an injured Timbe. He was immediately appointed assistant coach to James Nswaswa.

When Timbe officially announced his retirement, the club embarked on grooming him into a top tactician and flew him to Brazil and later to the United Kingdom, where he trained as a professional coach.

Timbe’s appointment as head coach in 1988 at Coffee did not surprise many. He reorganised the club by recruiting and moulding young players; in fact, his fledglings narrowly missed out on winning the league triumph in 1990 after coming up short against the then mighty SC Villa.

Timbe never won the trophy with Coffee, and this was mostly attributed to Coffee’s leadership crisis that drained the club until its collapse in 1995. By then, Timbe had established himself as a top coach and he narrowly missed his first major silverware in 1999, when his Lyantonde FC lost the Uganda Cup final in a shoot-out against Mbale Heroes.

The 2004 league title at SC Villa remained the only crown he won in his coaching career, but what stood out were the four Cecafa Cup titles, which he won with four different clubs.

This came in a span of seven years. The first feat was with SC Villa (2005), then Police FC (2006), then Rwanda’s Atraco (2009) and Tanzania’s Yanga (2011). This astonishing record may stand for generations.

LEGACY INTACT

On a personal note, he never shied away from wishing to coach The Cranes but he was never handed the opportunity, though in 2000, he handled the She Kobs (now the Crested Cranes).

In the times I interacted with him, I found him to be one of the few honest coaches. In his career, he handled about a dozen clubs but he hardly ever complained before the camera. Even when he became agitated with wrong calls from match officials, he remained calm at the end of the match, and rarely threw tantrums.

I once asked him why he follows entire games standing and he said this helps him make his trademark whistling gesture while passing instructions to players on the pitch.

In this era where coaches’ ratings are based on their hype, you would never find Timbe bragging or talking ill about his contemporaries in public.

He was too private and I never found him in a hangout; he was just passionate about football. At the time of his death, he was the sole remaining active coach from the old-school eighties era yet he was abreast with the modern tactics and often outsmarted the current era of coaches.

I am lucky to rub shoulders with this great man, and I celebrate his life.

bzziwa@observer.ug