Cranes year to forget, Hippos to remember

This is hardly a year Uganda Cranes will look back and say: “What a year!” Afcon and Chan failures, star player retirements, coaching changes, World Cup lethargy... the men’s senior and home-based national teams were largely a disappointment. Fortunately, this was masked in the success of  the Hippos, who reached the final of Afcon in Mauritania. Andrew Mwanguhya looks back at how the year panned out.

Chan 2020
Uganda’s results

Jan 18, 2021: 
Rwanda 0-0 Uganda
Jan 22: Uganda 1-2 Togo
Jan 26: Uganda 2-5 Morocco 
The home-based players tournament in Cameroon, played in January 2021 becasue of Covid disruption, was one Uganda entered looking to progress from the group stage for the first time in five attempts.
Instead, a draw with Rwanda and two defeats, including the 5-2 thrashing at the hands of eventual champions Morocco, which arguably broke Johnny McKinstry’s back as Cranes coach, stopped them in their tracks.

2022 World Cup qualifiers

Qualifying results
Sept 2: Kenya 0-0 Uganda
Sept 6: Uganda 0-0 Mali
Oct 7: Rwanda 0-1 Uganda
Oct 10: Uganda 1-0 Rwanda
Nov 11: Uganda 1-1 Kenya
Nov 14: Mali 1-0 Uganda
Micho arrived when the Cranes could not remember how to win a game of football, the last being the 1-0 victory over South Sudan the previous year. 
The Cranes had to top a World Cup qualifying group involving neighbours Kenya and Rwanda, and West Africans Mali to stand any realistic chance of going to Qatar. They scored only three goals – all by Fahad Bayo – conceded two, and won two games to finish behind Mali in a much-criticised campaign.

McKinstry out, Micho in
McKinstry stat

18 games, 12 wins, 3 draws

Just days after Onyango’s retirement in April, Fufa officially brought coach McKinstry’s agony to an end. The FA finally announced they had reached a mutual separation agreement with the Northern Irishman, bringing the 18-month relationship to an end.  
McKinstry, whose appointment in September 2019 was not helped by Covid, left with a 67 per cent win rate from the 18 games. He won 12 of those, drew three and lost as many. 
McKinstry was replaced by old flame Micho Sredojevic in July, the Serbian returning after quitting in 2017 after  Afcon finals. The Qatar 2022 World Cup qualifying campaign was his immediate task.

Afcon 2021 qualifiers
Decisive results

March 24: 
Uganda 0-0 Burkina Faso
March 29: Malawi 1-0 Uganda
The build-up to that dreadful Chan performance had hardly been impressive, too. The Cranes had dug deep to escape with a scrappy 1-0 victory over South Sudan at Kitende before losing by the same scoreline in the return leg in Nairobi. 
Fufa went ahead to suspend McKinstry and appoint his deputy Abdallah Mubiru as caretaker coach for the games against Burkina Faso and Malawi in March. 
Uganda managed just a point from those, with the 1-0 loss to Malawi ending their Afcon finals interest. The January-February 2022 finals in Cameroon will be the first Uganda is missing after playing at the last two editions.

U-20 boys soar highest

Road to the finals
Group A
Uganda     2-0    Mozambique
Cameroon     0-1    Uganda
Mauritania     1 -2    Uganda
Quarterfinals
Uganda     0(5)-0(3) B. Faso
Semifinals
Uganda     4-1     Tunisia
Final
Ghana     2-0     Uganda
Uganda’s biggest football story of the year! Having initially set a target of reaching the knockout stages, the Hippos progressed further, edging Burkina Faso in the quarterfinals before a convincing 4-1 thrashing of Tunisia to reach the final. Although the boys eventually fell 2-0 to Ghana, this was way too much punching-above-the-weight for the tournament debutants. 
Derrick Kakooza (five goals) top scored while Uganda had the highest number of players in the tournament XI, Morley Byekwaso voted coach of the tournament. 
Perhaps the dark spot for underage competition was failure in the Cecafa U23 Championship in Ethiopia, where the Kobs finished fifth.

Onyango retires
Accolades

Afcon finals 2017, 2019
Caf Champions League 2016
Africa Player of the Year 2016
Caf Super Cup 2017
Eight SA Premier League titles
Cranes failure raised mixed emotions from both fans and administrators, some of the fall-outs seeing Fufa president calling the football played at Chan “shitty” after players demanded their allowances. That did not go down well with then Cranes captain Denis Onyango, whose leaked audio chat with a colleague where he sharply called out Magogo, raised more anxiety. 

Events were quick. Following the audio leak, Onyango announced his retirement from international football, a week after Hassan Wasswa had also hung his boots. 
Both Onyango and Fufa, however, maintain that the player’s decision to retire was reached after the defeat in Malawi. Onyango made his Cranes debut in 2005 against Cape Verde. 
Onyango guided Uganda to two Afcon finals (2017 and 2019), won the Caf Africa player of the year award based in Africa in 2016, and clinched the Caf Champions League title with Sundowns.