Time is an ally coaches Basena and Kajoba don’t really have

Cranes interim coach Moses Basena. File photo

What you need to know:

  • Big Task. Interim Uganda Cranes coaches Basena and Kajoba did a fine job taking the team past Rwanda’s Amavubi Stars but the challenge of overcoming Africa Cup of Nations finalists Egypt next week is the proverbial ‘Baptism of Fire’ for the due

At the beginning of July and with his job done, Micho Srejodevic climbed onto his particularly high horse and rode off south into the waiting embrace of Orlando Pirates. In stepped his seasoned assistants Moses Basena and Fred Kajoba.
If those two suspected that they may be stepping into some very big shoes, they will also soon confirm that their predecessor left behind a weighty burden of expectation, borne of the small taste of recent successes.
But Micho was lucky have worked in a period when the nation was coming from a place of relative mediocrity. We were a patient lot because we knew no better. In such times, even the smallest of improvements were always going to register.
Basena (pic left) and Kajoba however don’t have that luxury. They just walked into a team where achievements like our fourth straight qualification for CHAN don’t even register as a faint blip on our radar of expectations. The nation now takes such things for granted and such is the stuff that breeds impatience amongst fans and employers alike. It is also why I think that the caretakers should get the fulltime job, if only precisely because the mindsets needed to conquer such a tricky transition will not come from individuals who feel their contribution is only fleeting.
In a way, we are saying that the only way Basena and Kajoba can secure their jobs is if they generate success immediately and consistently. That, I am afraid, is setting up the duo to fail. There is no such thing as consistent success. Neither for them, nor for any of their predecessors.
Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t the thinking behind only appointing them as caretakers. That way if they stumble, and they will, the Federation can quickly move on. If that is the case it would be complete lack of responsibility.
Either way I feel the interim management team will be assessed unfairly and this is not how to prep for a major game like the upcoming World Cup qualifier against Egypt next week. It’s easy to read off a long list of recent achievements - the AFCON qualification of Gabon 2017 and the electric start to Cameroun 2019 or indeed World Cup 2018. But Micho had a a time-bank from which he drew the means to correct his errors and build success. Time lent him clout.
Of course, the structures the Cranes built over the last four years will not fold over night. The methods, the networks, the staff and the accumulated knowledge that Basena and Kajoba were partly responsible for, will serve them well.
But we must also be willing to accept that all the achievements of the last four years are in way borrowed from a more patient era. They can only be lessons to draw from and not the basis of judgement for the new regime.
In any case the duo must brace themselves for this reality in which heightened expectations will most certainly rob them of success’ greatest ally – time.

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MBanturaki