Micho hoping to help Cranes defy the odds

KAMPALA.

For just under four decades, qualifying for the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) finals has been the first thing on the bucket list of Ugandan football fans.

Attempts haven’t been without tears. Close shaves have made calculators such an accessory and that oral compulsive habit of nail-biting something of a norm.

Shock absorbers for the residues left after nearly performances are not to be relied upon. Nor can those seemingly solemn promises not to throw one’s weight behind The Cranes, again.
The clean slate of a new Afcon campaign always brings with it renewed hope.

The 2017 Afcon qualifying, which gets underway in June, has blurred the boundaries between hope and optimism even before a ball is kicked. Just to remind ourselves, nothing much has changed about the Afcon qualifying process. It remains straightforward.

There are 13 groups, whose winners will join the hosts, Gabon, in the 2017 finals. That leaves two backdoor tickets to Gabon for the best runners-up.

Right now is not the time for the thoughts of Cranes fans to race ahead to a plethora of different permutations. Many of them strongly believe that a group comprising Burkina Faso, Botswana and Comoros shouldn’t trigger sleeplessness.

Cranes coach, Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojevic, is also cautiously optimistic. He says “our chances are absolutely realistic and possible”. He adds that “with the support of all stakeholders, we can plan each match as it comes”.

There will be six match days, starting June of 2015 when Uganda hosts Botswana. Match day two in September of 2015 will have Uganda on the road away to Comoros.

The doubleheader against Burkina Faso will play out in March of 2016. June 2016 will bring with it a trip to Botswana before The Cranes wrap things up with a home tie against Comoros. On paper, it looks like this could well be the campaign when the jinx is broken. But you can also tell why Micho is cautiously optimistic. He plans to blood young players into The Cranes.
It’s not lost on the Serbian coach that the rough-and-tumble of African football can’t be mustered at the snap of finger.

Doubleheaders have also been Uganda’s Achilles heel. For instance, the twin losses against Togo soiled the 2015 Afcon qualification hopes.

All of this means that lofty hurdles on the road to Gabon won’t be a rarity. Micho isn’t one to be afraid of fight, though. The Serb has always painted the portrait of a fighter, stating that living through a war when Eastern Europe was being balkanised left him battle hardened. The fight is not about to trickle out of her.

Timothy Awany maintains KCC FC’s proud tradition

KCC FC’s ancestral home at Lugogo has always been a glamorous lure for ball-playing defenders in Uganda. The club is steeped in a tradition of playing with such great panache at the back. For all its calming effect, clearing one’s lines at the back is frowned upon by the club’s faithful.

In Some Call me Captain Marvel, a soon-to-be-released biographical account written by your columnist, former Uganda Cranes skipper, Ibrahim Sekagya, builds up a fascinating portrait of how the tradition holds allure for defenders keen to express themselves with the ball to their feet.

The tradition certainly played a profound role in Sekagya’s decision to swap State House FC’s strip for KCC FC’s unmistakable golden yellow hue during the off season in 1996. Sekagya is in hallowed company as some of the ball-playing defenders to have draped themselves in KCC’s golden yellow strip include Tom Lwanga, Jimmy Kirunda and Derrick Muyanja. Even when the chips were falling down and KCC was not throwing its weight around, the conveyor belt of front foot defenders refused to be a silent metaphor for the past.

It positioned itself at the intersection of life and death, producing the likes of Ronald Apangu. The art of front foot defending had dipped of recent. The days when the art was ubiquitous were diminishing in the rear-view mirror. All the windscreen now beamed was back foot defending.

There are green shoots of recovery, though. The dream of regaining lost purpose at Lugogo remains. There are many pretenders with loads of fight in them. There is hope, and, after a tough start to his KCC career, Timothy Awany, is doing his best to ensure that it doesn’t turn out to be a false dawn.

When Sadolin Paints stunned KCC 2-1 in a Uganda Premier League match at the Philip Omondi Stadium, Awany, a mid-season signing from Kibuli SS, came in for some flak.

His mistake had gifted the visitors an unlikely winner. A police cordon was needed to shield KCC players and their beleaguered coach, Abdallah Mubiru, from the odd projectile and tons of verbal volleys.

Awany has since gradually won over many of the fans with a string of smart front foot defending displays that would no doubt please his polished predecessors. The pick of the displays came during the Kampala derby against SC Villa two Fridays ago. It was a tale of two penalties in the league encounter that ended in a stalemate.

Awany won KCC’s penalty after he carried the ball into the opposition box in time-honoured fashion before being felled by Fahad Kawooya. The passing range exhibited by Awany was just as gratifying in the gaze of football purists.
Awany is only figuring in KCC’s first team squad because Ronnie Kisekka is one of the many walking wounded at Lugogo.

Thrown in at the deep end, Awany has had to do lots of learning on the job. Mubiru, whose institutional memory handed him the coaching reins at Lugogo, has repudiated the young defender’s detractors. Spruce and tidy defenders are very much welcome at Lugogo even if they make the odd costly mistake.