Middle ground could be key to Desabre getting ‘flowers’

Sebastien Desabre, the 26th coach to hand the Cranes (and only sixth at the Afcon finals), comes off as thoughtful if emotionally subdued and unemphatic. There is something very restrained about this 42-year-old Frenchman. He might have been born in Valence, a place famed for being the door to the South of France as much as a hotbed of flowers, but his faintly reticent style is neither inviting nor rosy.

By the time you read this piece, you will know if Desabre -- who promises have persisted in their urging of playing attacking football delivered Uganda’s first win at the Afcon finals since that show-stopping semi-final performance in 1978. The Cranes came up against a swashbuckling Democratic Republic of Congo outfit at Cairo International Stadium yesterday with the vast majority of Ugandans fearing for the worst. Hopefully they were wrong.

The pessimism, however, could be down to the fact that Desabre has in characteristic fashion been so muted, even matter-of-factly, in the buildup to Egypt 2019. We cannot claim that the Frenchman’s quietness has disturbed the equilibrium of our predictions-obsessed selves in unforeseen ways. Yet a few sleeps before Egypt 2019 rolled off, Desabre awoke from his ‘slumber’ to tell us something that intrigued and thrilled in almost equal measure.

The Cranes, he revealed, won’t hold back in desperate hope that a safety first approach yields dividends. To be fair to Desabre’s predecessor, the pragmatic approach almost took Uganda places at Gabon 2017 were it not for Isaac Isinde’s moment of madness and Abdallah El Said’s late show. Fans yearning to see bravery and determination in the face of great odds got a fair dose of it at Gabon 2017. In turn, they displayed a beautiful side of fandom whilst willing on their heroes, particularly against Egypt.

Uganda will yet again stand foursquare in the vortex of the Pharaohs’ challenge, but this time Desabre wants Cranes players to do something different. He wants them “to take risks.” The Frenchman knows that anything less will attract a charge of trying to reinvent the Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojevic wheel.

It is, however, equally important for Desabre not to be blind to risks associated with giving players a broad latitude to take risks. A middle ground has to be reached. A heavy duty loss might not be different from a marginal one, but the court of public opinion tends to see things a little differently. In which case, flowers and an open door become such a rarity.