In the hard, unsentimental rhythm of fixtures and finals, the sport still stops when loss arrives. Deaths of Notable Football Figures 2025 is not one single headline, it is a thread of separate tragedies that share one consequence, empty spaces in dressing rooms, in touchlines, and in the hearts of supporters who knew these names as more than ink on a teamsheet.
Within a few days in December, football was forced to mourn across continents. Kenya lost a coach who built women’s pathways in the North Rift. DR Congo lost a 29-year-old winger remembered for a historic CHAN goal. England mourned a young player returning from a non-league match. Australia reeled after a mass shooting that took the life of a semi-pro midfielder who had come chasing a new life by the sea.
Justin Okiring and the touchline that became a classroom
Former Harambee Starlets head coach Justine Ojamoong Okiring died on Monday in a Kitale hospital after succumbing to injuries sustained in an attack in West Pokot County on Saturday evening. He was rushed for treatment, but did not recover, with reports indicating he was based in Trans Nzoia County at the time of the incident. Authorities have launched investigations and are pursuing the assailants.
To list Okiring’s teams is to trace a map of commitment to women’s football in Kenya. He coached Nasokol Girls Secondary School, record national champions Wiyeta Girls of Kitale, and second-tier side Trans Nzoia Falcons among others, and until his death he was head coach of Brenda Girls. At Wiyeta he won national and East African Schools Games titles, the kind of success that can change how a community looks at girls playing football.
His national team moment arrived in 2014 when he was appointed head coach of Harambee Starlets. The stint was brief, but it mattered, and those close to him framed it as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream he often spoke about.
Nation Sport reported that Okiring was 47 and coached the Starlets from 2014 to 2015 before being replaced by David Ouma. One of his notable assignments was leading Kenya against Rwanda in the first round of the 2014 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, where Rwanda advanced on away goals after a 2 to 2 aggregate, following a 2 to 1 loss in Nairobi and a 1 to 0 win in Kigali.
The same report noted players he worked with at national team level including Jentrix Shikangwa of Simba Queens in Tanzania, Violet Nanjala of United Eagles Women Football Club in Saudi Arabia, and Mwanahalima Adam of HB Køge in Denmark. Those names underline a simple truth about coaching, the work stays alive in other people’s careers.
At club level, he coached Trans Nzoia Falcons in the FKF Women’s Premier League from 2018 to 2023. In a 2023 interview he cited immense pressure from fans and management as the reason for his resignation. Nation Sport also reported that in the previous season he helped the team avoid relegation despite players boycotting training over unpaid wages, a difficult reality he managed for months.
Tributes reflected a coach whose influence went beyond tactics. The Football Kenya Federation said he was a committed and respected servant of the game, mourning his passing and extending condolences to family, friends and the Trans Nzoia Falcons fraternity.
A particularly personal tribute came from popular comedienne and footballer Dem wa Facebook, who credited Okiring with changing her life trajectory. She recalled meeting him when she joined Brenda Girls in Form One, and said that after seeing her potential, he made sure she stayed in school because of football, later moving her from Brenda Girls to Nasokol Girls where she continued her studies for free while pursuing the game she loved.
That is the human story at the centre of Okiring’s legacy. Women’s football development is often discussed in big policy terms, but it is built in smaller acts, a coach insisting a talented teenager should not drop out, a scholarship opportunity found, a team kept alive through unpaid months, a player encouraged to believe.
What his career tells us about Kenyan women’s football
Okiring’s path, from schools powerhouses to the national team and back to the domestic league, mirrors the structure that sustains the women’s game. The schools competitions he won at Wiyeta and later guided in 2017, with a Kenya Secondary Schools Sports Association national title and an East African crown, show how schools remain a crucial pipeline for talent and opportunity.
- his success at schools level highlighted how trophies can shift community support and resources toward girls’ teams,
- his work in the FKF Women’s Premier League exposed the pressure points that clubs still face, including wages and stability,
- his national team stint showed how quickly coaching dreams can arrive, and how quickly the job can turn into a results business.
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Chico Ushindi and the goal that became a landmark
In DR Congo, the football world mourned the death of Congolese international Chico Ushindi Wa Kubanza, who died on Saturday, December 13, in Lubumbashi after a brief illness. He was 29, and tributes poured in for a player remembered for his contribution to club and country.
According to reports, JS Groupe Bazano and the Congolese club announced the news, and it was also confirmed by the Congolese Football Federation in an official statement. Chico was a product of the Ecofoot Katumbi Football School, a well-known academy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
His career took him from CS Don Bosco to Tout Puissant Mazembe in 2017. With Mazembe, he enjoyed several seasons, noted for his attacking role and his ability to operate down the right flank. In 2021 he joined Tanzania’s Yanga SC for a brief spell during the 2021 to 2022 season.
But memory in football is often a single moment that stays sharp long after match footage fades, and for Chico, it was his CHAN impact. He was a key player for DR Congo at the 2020 African Nations Championship tournament held in 2021, scoring the winning goal in a 1 to 0 victory over Congo Brazzaville in the group stage. That strike was reported as the first official goal scored in the new Japoma Stadium in Douala, Cameroon.
Fans also remembered that he played in the quarter-final match against hosts Cameroon. In the aftershock of his death, social media filled with condolences, and one tribute described him as a striker who gave his all, emphasizing that Japoma Stadium goal as a historic moment in African football.
Ethan McLeod and the long road home after a matchday
In England, Macclesfield forward Ethan McLeod died in a fatal road accident on December 16. He had been returning home after Macclesfield’s National League North game against Bedford Town, where he was an unused substitute.
The accident occurred around 10.40 pm UK time when his Mercedes collided with a metal barrier near junction 15 in Northampton. He received help from first responders and authorities, but died at the scene.
McLeod’s story carried a familiar thread in English football, the early promise, the academy grind, the search for a first-team foothold. He joined Wolverhampton Wanderers’ academy at age seven, played for the club’s U-21s, and had loan stints at Alvechurch before leaving Wolves. He later had trials at Rushall Olympic, Stourbridge and Macclesfield, and it was Macclesfield who signed him in July.
His last game for the Silkmen was on Saturday, December 13, against South Shields in the FA Trophy. Macclesfield’s tribute described an incredibly talented and well-respected squad member, adding that his infectious personality endeared him to everyone he met, and that his vibrant legacy would not fade.
Wolves also released a statement through academy director Jon Hunter-Barrett, saying the club and academy were devastated, and noting that Ethan’s younger brother Conor is also in their academy. It is a detail that hits hard, a family’s grief sitting alongside the sport’s ongoing routine, training sessions continuing, but never quite the same.
Dan Elkayam and football cut short by terror
In Sydney, the Bondi Beach shooting became a national trauma and a football story, too. Reuters reported that 15 people were killed in the worst mass shooting in Australia in over 30 years, with victims aged between 10 and 87, and 42 others receiving treatment in different hospitals.
Among those killed was Dan Elkayam, a French national who played for Rockdale Ilinden Football Club, a semi-professional club in Sydney. Reports said the alleged gunmen, a father and son, opened fire during a gathering to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah after legally obtaining firearms. The son, Naveed Akram, was arrested at the scene and taken to hospital with critical injuries, while the father was shot dead by police.
Rockdale’s president Dennis Loether described Elkayam as an extremely talented midfield player and a down-to-earth, happy-go-lucky individual warmly embraced by those he met. The statement added that football was his passion, alongside spending time on the beach and socialising with friends, and that he was employed and looking to create a life in Australia.
French President Emmanuel Macron also mourned the victims, calling the attack an antisemitic terrorist act, and expressed the solidarity of the nation with Elkayam’s family and loved ones.
When football mourns, it reveals what really mattered
It is tempting to reduce death in sport to a paragraph, a minute’s silence, a black armband, then back to the league table. But the losses captured under Deaths of Notable Football Figures 2025 expose something deeper, how many different lives the game holds.
Okiring’s life shows coaching as guardianship, where a football programme can be a route to education and dignity. Chico Ushindi’s story shows how one goal can become a cultural marker, a stadium’s first official celebration, a national team memory that outlives a tournament. McLeod’s story speaks to the fragile, hopeful world of non-league ambition and the long drives that come with it. Elkayam’s death is a reminder that players are citizens, too, vulnerable to the same violence and fear that can strike anywhere.
The common thread across four different tragedies
- community, because each figure was rooted in a network of teammates, students, supporters and family,
- identity, because football was not just what they did, it was how they were known and how they belonged,
- legacy, because what remains is often the small evidence of impact, a scholarship, a statement from a club, a remembered goal, a smile in a team photo.
Grief does not need embellishment. The facts are heavy enough. A coach dies after an attack in West Pokot and the search for assailants continues. A 29-year-old international is taken after a short illness. A young forward dies on the road after a matchday. A midfielder is killed in a terror attack that leaves a city and a nation shaken.
Football will keep moving, it always does. But it should also keep remembering, not just the highlight reels, but the human beings, the ones who coached through pressure, played through hunger for a chance, and built a life around the game’s simple promise that tomorrow can be better than today.
