Bottom of the pile to the top of the league

"You have made history. Whatever happens no-one can take this away from you." The words are spoken quietly but fervently by Bob Munro, a 72-year-old Canadian and the lone old man in a room full of young athletes. The chairman is speaking to the players of Mathare United.

Today they play the Red Berets in the final match of the Kenyan Premier League season and barring a freak loss by nine or more goals they will be crowned champions of Kenya for the first time. This is not an ordinary group of players and Mathare United is a team like no other. Drawn exclusively from the boys of one of Africa's largest and harshest slums, Mathare United has had to remake Kenyan football in its own image, conquer poverty and prejudice and overcome chronic corruption to reach the summit.

The team talk feels like a prayer meeting. There is none of the bling characteristic of a 21st-century professional footballer. In the whole room there is a solitary gold necklace and just one pair of sunglasses.

Most of the players have known each other since they were small children. These boys are the cream of a unique crop, all members of a Mathare slum NGO that has evolved into one of the most extraordinary youth development programmes in the world. Each of the first team players has to complete 60 hours' community service a month coaching Mathare youth teams, running Aids-awareness programmes and even cleaning streets in the slum.

At 30, Edgar Ochieng is one of the elder statesmen of the team and plays in defence for Mathare and Kenya. Tall and physically imposing, he bears a striking resemblance to former French international Marcel Desailly. He puts the team's success down to their upbringing. "It's as if we are brought up together in the same culture. It has made us the best team."

When he is not playing matches or training he is coaching children or working in the slum. "There is no time for idling," he says with a huge smile. Today there are 18,000 children from that slum playing in 1,200 teams and Mathare boasts world football's second ranked youth team and the reigning "street football" world champions.

But their battle to win recognition in their home country, where for years they were known mockingly as the "slum boys", has been blighted by the endemic corruption for which Kenya has become famous. Despite a rapid rise through the leagues and a shock Kenyan Cup win in 1998, the final step has been extremely difficult. For each of the last three seasons Mathare has been the outstanding team but has been robbed of the league championship by corrupt officials.

It has become routine for non-existent penalties to be awarded, innocent players to be suspended and clubs to be docked legitimate points in the final rounds. The worst of the referees have been attacked by enraged players after outrageous decisions. Mathare is one of the rare teams that has not laid a hand on match officials. The Kenyan Football Federation has meanwhile looted its own coffers and left its national team destitute.

Even now, with mathematics firmly on their side, there is caution at Mathare. "It wouldn't be right celebrate until it's 100 per cent," says Mr Munro. "We need three points for an absolute irrefutable victory for Mathare United, to be absolute clear winners."

Mr Munro is not an orthodox chairman. A Scots-Canadian, former diplomat and baseball fanatic, he moved to Nairobi to help set up the United Nations Environment Programme more than 20 years ago. When he got there he decided to start an NGO to give a sporting chance to some of the children he met. What happened next has largely taken over Munro's own existence and has changed the lives thousands of boys.

Francis Kimanza is typical of those boys. Now in his late thirties, he has been involved with the Mathare Youth Sports Association (Mysa) since he was 11 years old. He played in the youth teams that won the prestigious Norway Cup, captained the side that won the Kenyan Cup 10 years ago and now coaches the team that is finally set to deliver the league title.

Known to everyone as Kim, he proudly describes himself as "one of the originals". When Mysa started on "his doorstep" Kim was playing football with a paper ball. "We grew up outdoors, the only reason to go inside was for meals, and often there weren't any," he says.

Mysa's myriad teams produce about half of the professional footballers in Kenya, more than half of the national team and 40 players currently plying their trade abroad.

Kim was recently elected head coach of the national team and the game's governing body has been overhauled and rebranded as Football Kenya to break with the discredited past. The national team, with a spine of Mathare players, are through to the second stage of World Cup qualifying and climbing the Fifa rankings for the first time.

Kim wants to rebrand Kenyan football to make it as famous as athletics. "We have the athletes, the technique and the flair. We just need the brand." Unlike every other team in the league, Mathare cannot buy in outside talent and can only pick players from its own youth system. "Coaching Mathare you always have one hand tied behind your back," Kim says ruefully. "If the other coach wants to he can go to Tanzania and buy a proven striker."

Kim has just finished conducting training on a pitch that makes your ankles sore to look at it. A few patches of grass adorn a baked hard surface. If you have the technique to play on this surface then you can be world beaters on a proper pitch, says Kim.

"We are the best team on and off the pitch. Despite financial problems, insufficient equipment and other teams stealing our players we have stayed mentally strong and we have survived," he adds.

Much of that strength comes from growing up in Mathare itself. About two miles north of Nairobi's business district, it was the largest slum in Africa until it was overtaken by nearby Kibera. Some 600,000 people live in Mathare, many of them in conditions that are scarcely imaginable. Theoretically divided into 16 villages, in practice it's a place that defies demarcation. Tens of thousands of corrugated iron and concrete shacks crowd together to form a blanket of rust. Its claustrophobic lanes are cut by channels of dark grey, viscous sludge. These open sewers, choking with plastic detritus, are the only sanitation option for most the people who live here. Half-naked children play amid mounds of rotting rubbish and clouds of flies. Almost every public health problem recorded is rife here. It's a place that feels a long way from hope. But it is a place that Munro is convinced is full of "genius" when given the chance.

The original Mysa headquarters is now a free library run for the NGO by George Wambugu, 29. The demand for its services is overwhelming. Four small rooms offer a trove of books and a haven of quiet for its 10,500 members. "People need somewhere to read and study," Mr Wambugu says in a librarian's whisper. He says the good thing about working there is that you see people "change their lives" and leave the slum.

On the northern outskirts of Mathare, the new home of the charity has been built on land donated by a local businessman. Inside its gates, painted in the green and yellow club crest, a group of wheelchair-bound teenagers are being put through their paces at basketball.

This is Peter Karanja's office, a contemporary of Kim's who played in Mysa's earliest teams and is now the managing director of the charity. He is overseeing the rebuilding of the shoe library. As he points out, with some 18,000 children playing every year they can't afford that many football boots. The solution is a lending library housed in an old shipping container. It's typical of the can-do attitude in an organisation with huge ambitions and modest funding, much of it from Norway.

"When I grew up Mathare, that name was associated with vices like criminality and prostitution," he remembers. "Little was known about the great potential. Mathare United is the true explanation of that potential. As boys we didn't want to say that we came from Mathare, but today I'm confident to say it."

Mysa has also had to break down some gender barriers along the way. When the team had gone abroad in its early days to take part in tournaments they saw that the other clubs had girls' teams. "Why can't our girls do the same?", Mr Karanja thought.

Mr Karanja, Kim and others decided to approach the parents of girls they knew, but it was hard going to begin with as they were still teenage boys asking for girls to be allowed to come with them to the football pitch. Eventually they got their way though. Now there are 20 Mathare girls on sports scholarships in the US and 20-year-old Doreen Nabwire was recently chosen as a Fifa representative.

Mr Karanja explains that Mysa has given him a "dignified life" and says the philosophy remains that of self help. "You do something and Mysa will do something. You do nothing, Mysa does nothing."

Despite being a national star on the verge of the biggest game of his career, Edgar Ochieng finishes his day much like any other. The tall defender can be seen heading off to his community service, picking his way through the rubbish-clogged lanes of Mathare with the same poise and balance that he brings to the field. The typical footballer's boast that they haven't forgotten where they came from means a little bit more in Mathare.