Victor Wanyama's brother won Champions League despite being relatively unknown
Victor Wanyama achieved widespread popularity while playing for Premier League clubs like Tottenham and Southampton, but his 'unknown' older brother secured a sensational Champions League medal
Victor Wanyama during his prime years in the Premier League was a colossus of a central midfielder.
The combative CF Montreal star captured attention for his performances for Celtic in the Scottish Premiership, before earning a move to Southampton.
His consistently solid performances for the Saints in the middle of the park helped the club to their most successful spell, finishing eighth, seventh and sixth in each of the three seasons he spent there before securing an £11million move to Tottenham.
And after making over 150 Premier League appearances and 64 caps for Kenya, Wanyama’s career has massively outshone his older brother McDonald Mariga’s in terms of popularity.
Yet Mariga's footballing story deserves it own attention.
Now retired, McDonald shared Victor’s remarkable physical strength throughout a career spanning from 2003 to 2019.
However, unlike his sibling’s pathway through the Belgian and Scottish leagues, McDonald opted to move from Kenya to Sweden in 2005, where he briefly represented Enkopings SK before signing for Helsingborgs.
Despite interest from Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth, the elder Wanyama’s career next took him to the Serie A with Parma in 2007.
His second season at Parma proved to be his most successful, scoring three times in 35 appearances to help them clinch promotion to Serie A for the 2009/10 season.
Known as ‘Big Mac’ in football circles, Mariga’s career could have taken an entirely different trajectory in January 2010 when Manchester City showed interest, but work permit issues kept him in Italy.
He proved to be a shrewd deadline day signing for Inter Milan instead, making his debut in the Coppa Italia semi-final win against Fiorentina and first being substituted on in the Champions League against Chelsea.
Mariga helped Inter and Jose Mourinho to an unprecedented treble season primarily as an impact sub and was even called “the best thing that could have happened to the club” in January by chairman Massimo Moratti.
It proved to be the highlight of his career as he only made a total of 21 league appearances for Inter in his four years at the club.
Following loan spells at Real Sociedad and Parma, he looked to revive his career by re-joining the latter for one season in 2014.
The final years of Mariga’s footballing endeavours were made up of spells in the lower levels of Italian and Spanish football with Latina, Real Oviedo and Cuneo Calcio.
He eventually decided to hang up his boots in 2019 with a long career and a highly respectable 40 international caps under his belt.
Later that year, he launched his foray into Kenyan politics aged 32 by unsuccessfully attempting to secure a parliamentary seat for the constituency of Kibra.