Litmus test as Cape Verde plays Uganda

The autopsy of Uganda Cranes’ failed attempt at qualification for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations was unique and stuttering.
Back in November 2014, the Fufa president Moses Magogo, while addressing the media, said that the federations focus was on qualifying for the 2019 edition.

He literally meant that the 2017 Afcon in Gabon wasn’t the immediate bull’s eye.

“We are not going to look at 2017, but will use the qualifiers to build a team that can qualify for 2019 in Cameroon,” Magogo said back then. The federation would then hold a football symposium the following year at which the Cameroon 2019 or Project 2019 was born. That became a mini-slogan that the football administrators would do everything possible to ensure that Cranes would end their Afcon absence at 41 years.

Politics
For a country healing from missing out on the 2015 Afcon in Equatorial Guinea, the federation could have been viewed as insensitive and callous.
“We don’t want to be like Rwanda and Kenya who qualified once (2004) and failed to maintain that standard. That is not our goal,” Magogo added.

Some saw it as Magogo acting like a smart politician whose intention was to take pressure off himself and the country.
Uganda’s previous qualification campaigns had painfully ended with Cranes missing out by narrow margins and the gem that’s calculus. Qualifying for Afcon had been the catchphrase of Lawrence Mulindwa, Magogo’s predecessor, with whom the latter worked as one of the deputies. It was the Holy Grail.

2017 Afcon
Two years earlier than promised, Cranes ended their Afcon hoodoo. Farouk Miya scored the lone goal to beat Comoros 1-0 last September at Namboole.

So were Uganda only lucky?
“Whereas it is indeed true there is luck in everything we do in life but it is unfair to me, the coaches, the players and whoever invested lots of time and money to summarize it as luck,” Magogo said in an interview last year.

This successful campaign brought immense lessons about preparations as Cranes always played international friendlies in the lead up to qualification games.

Key among those were friendlies in Zimbabwe and Togo before facing Botswana and Burkina Faso away from home respectively.
This has continued as Uganda has played games in Ethiopia and Senegal before facing Cape Verde in the qualifying opener today.

Players?
While the statement of focusing on 2019 was made by Magogo, it’s only the players who can execute it. There are only 10 survivors from the 23 who were in Gabon just months back.

These are Denis Onyango, Godfrey Walusimbi, Muhammed Shaban, Wakiro Nicolas Wadada, Murushid Juuko, Khalid Aucho, Farouk Miya, Hassan Wasswa, Timothy Awany and Geoffrey Sserunkuma.
It’s hard to find a clear pattern of a group of players whom the game here has groomed since that statement was made in November, 2014 with attention on 2019.

There isn’t a particular pattern of a group that has for example come through an U-23 or U-20 set-up together to get this far, bar Miya. Emmanuel Okwi, who is likely to be Cranes’ lead striker following the retirement of Geoffrey Massa, is only back to the side after rebuilding his fledging career.

Task at hand
Okwi has oscillated between SC Villa, plus stints in the Tanzanian league which many don’t regard as an upgrade on Ugandan football. When Uganda was placed in the same group as Tanzania, Lesotho and Cape Verde, it brought a unanimous conclusion that this was going to be easy.
The 12 Group winners and three best runners-up qualify for the final tournament.

None are powerhouses in African football like Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia and Togo et al that have shut the door on Cranes’ aspirations in the recent past are in Uganda’s group.
Without disrespecting the rest, coach Micho Sredojevic noted this week that Cape Verde, two-time Afcon finalists, would be toughest fixture in what he described as “a fair draw”.

“It’s the highest match that we are having in the group. It means to us a lot. We already have a rough picture on who will start, who will come in. So it’s a big one on our hands,” Micho said. His tactics, the players’ performances and Magogo’s assertion are all under scrutiny starting in Praia, the latter unusually as much.

Afcon 2019 qualifiers
Burundi vs South Sudan
Zambia vs Mozambique
Botswana vs Mauritania
Cameroon vs Morocco
Niger vs Swaziland
G. Bissau vs Namibia
Nigeria vs South Africa
S. Leone vs Kenya
Tanzania vs Lesotho
C. Verde vs Uganda
I. Coast vs Guinea
Senegal vs Eq. Guinea