Rich blend of youth, experience could be antidote for what ails Uganda at the Chan

In many respects, the African Nations Championship is Ugandan football’s awkward middle child. The enduring importance of the Africa Cup of Nations finals has lodged the championship in the back of our mind as an almost accidental thing.

Yet far from being an indelible and shocking act of provocation, Chan – the acronym by which the continental championship is better known – allows a strain of significance to co-reside with a whiff of insignificance.

If Chan’s vision was a horror almost beyond contemplation, then the last child would long have adopted extraordinarily hostile language towards it. As it is, the last child – typified by the multiplicity of national championships across Caf’s 56 member associations – has not tossed toys out of the pram.

This is hardly astonishing. In fact, it seemed not just possible but perhaps inevitable that this would be the outcome.

While Chan began in 2009 as a tournament uncertain of its place in history, the continental showpiece has since found its niche. Dispensing with players not actively playing in countries where they hold citizenship has given Chan a unique selling point.

Its stewardship of wide-eyed players into the paid ranks (remember Yunus Sentamu, anyone?) has consequently come to become its calling card.

After failing to make it to the first staging of the championship, Uganda has taken part in each of the Chan finals held between 2011 and 2018. Early next year, the Cranes will turn out in the sixth edition of the tournament.

Welcome as the figure of a fifth straight appearance is, Uganda has not purged itself of grim conclusions. This is largely because making it to the knockout stage of the championship has always proven to be a lofty hurdle. Not once has Uganda made it out of a Chan group!

To end a decade-long drought, the Cranes will have to assert their authority in a group that includes defending champions Morocco, neighbours Rwanda, and first-timers Togo. This should not be presented as an impossibly difficult proposition. Cranes coach Johnny McKinstry has at his disposal a rich blend of youthful exuberance and several old hands.

Calling on the likes of Murushid Juuko, Tonny Mawejje, and Denis Iguma could finally change the course of Uganda’s Chan fortunes. Their know-how could provide a cutting edge that not only carries Uganda out of Group C, but quite possibly the whole nine yards.

Broader questions must nevertheless be considered. And they will be if indeed, with McKinstry’s enthusiastic blessing, old hands feature in Uganda’s group matches at Stade de la Réunification in Cameroon’s largest city of Douala next January.

Questions will be asked about whether emerging players are being denied a platform to not just showcase their talent but get handy experience. And lest we forget, Uganda teems with lots of rising stars whose rough edges can be smoothed out by the odd Chan appearance here and there.

Trying to understand such a confusing tangle about which outcome better serves Ugandan football is the quintessential chicken-egg problem. Steering a middle course between the two polar opposites is likely what will tease out a win-win situation.

The studied approach on which the relentless pursuits of McKinstry and his backroom staff rest provide a formal assurance of sorts. There is, however, no guarantee of a benign outcome. In which case the middle child will have succeeded in being, well, awkward.

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