Cranes bask in glory of clean sheets and good first touches

Uganda’s routine home win against Malawi’s Flames last Sunday packed quite a bit for us to untangle. The long arc had a clean sheet that some, with varying degrees of success, would argue has become the catalyst for purposeful Afcon qualifying campaigns. This after all was the 11th shutout talismanic netminder Denis Onyango was overseeing in 14 Afcon qualifiers.

Clean sheets crave acknowledgment. While many fans turn them into something transcendent — even enraptured — Cranes faithful nowadays seem clearly unmoved by their abundance. Consecutive clean sheets, including one on the road in West Africa, should suffice to merit — at worst — a simple recognition. Their presence or rather predictability should be fulfilling and rewarding, not less. It is goals, however, that settle matches. And in our patchwork we had two of them to purr over after drawing a blank in Ouagadougou. Each goal had a story to tell, reinforcing footballing tropes that seem alarmingly pertinent nowadays. Johnny McKinstry made the bold call to go with Fahad Bayo as his spearhead.

The gangly striker has lit up the Uganda Premier League with domineering performances traditionally expected of an archetypal if orthodox No.9. He, however, remains a work of progress when it comes to international football. The moments of brilliance he produced to drill a final nail in Malawi’s coffin more than compensated for a tentative start.
A modern day football outfit often operates with one centre-forward. The said centre-forward is expected to be strong enough to impose himself be it with the back facing the goal or in trying to get goal side. McKinstry must have been well pleased in how Bayo won the physical battle in the lead up to his goal. The highest level of precision showed while finding the onion bag was, dare I say, only the cherry on the cake.

Bayo’s goal-scoring debut in Afcon qualifiers and McKinstry’s interest in another gangly striker, Alex Bbakka could well spell doom for Patrick Kaddu. The Morocco-based striker runs the channels brilliantly well, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is not a standout attribute that McKinstry wants to see in his No.9. It could well be because in Emma Okwi the Northern Irishman has a player on the team that can competently do likewise. Against Malawi, Okwi scored his fifth goal in eight international matches.
By itself that statistic is ripe enough to be unpacked, yet it is something else that your columnist chooses to interest himself — the quality of Okwi’s first touch in the lead up to his goal. It brings us to yet another footballing trope. One about the first touch being the prize possession of a player plying their trade in the final third of a pitch.

Oddly, Uganda previously found itself grappling with attacking players with hideously bad first touches. From Geoffrey Massa to Edrisa Lubega, the quality of the first touch of Cranes attackers left a lot to be desired. Then along came Okwi. The initial touch preceding his goals against Malawi and Kenya is stuff that isn’t taught. It is in many respects innate, and much like the clean sheets that are aplenty nowadays should not be glossed over.