Why Cecafa cannot keep kicking the proverbial can

Brace. Emmanuel Okwi celebrates. PHOTO BY JOHN BATANUDDE

It goes without saying that the Cecafa region handles the idea of continental footballing success gingerly, if it embraces the winning feeling at all!
Yet after spending what felt like eternity wrapped up in knots, underwhelming at any opportunity, the much-malinged football region demonstrated it was capable of more than warmth when the mood took over.

Fielding four representatives (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi) at the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations finals was supposed to crack open a new world of possibilities. It was supposed to be a coming-out party of sorts. The region that was often accused, with some justice, of straying into punchbag territory now looked primed to steal into the limelight.

While the task at hand in Egypt appeared particularly formidable, observers expected Cecafa’s representatives to nonetheless show some modest progress. Instead, they left no better than they came -- if anything worse. Of the four representatives, it was only Uganda that made a vital impression. But it too survived, barely.
Such sporting failure of course sits uneasily with the supremacy from North Africa whose four representatives all made it to the last-16. Even West Africa emerged from the group stages smelling of roses after all but one (Guinea-Bissau) of its nine-strong representatives made it to the knockout rounds.

We cannot turn our backs, with a hint of impatience, to the oft-times topsy-turvy nature of the game in this part of the continent. The green shoots do little to disabuse us of hope that borders on fantasy. It, however, should invariably follow that we try to find what others are doing right that keeps eluding us. Cecafa can’t keep kicking the can down the road. Some tough questions have to be asked.