If you have watched Uganda Hippos play in Zambia, you will agree that the future is bright for Ugandan football given this is our feeder group to the Cranes.
Matia Lule’s team has very group structured play and they have been brilliant. Despite bowing out at the semifinals via a shoot out, the boys have shown organisation in how they launch attacks and also defend.
This is a far cry from the senior side that lost to Zanzibar in the semis finals of the CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup. The Defending champions were reduced to 10 mean after Joseph Nsubuga – who was the last man – pulled down Ibrahim Hamad who had sight of goal, but even with 10 men the Cranes kept poking but with no real threat.
However, for the years I have watched the Cranes play, we have no real identity or style of play. Do we play wing football, are we a counter attacking team, do we pass the football?
If you closely follow local soccer this season you will see something about the way Police plays, they pass the ball so well and confidently and win or lose they will do that for 9o minutes. The season before there was the KCCA way with players like Mutyaba at the apex of that style.
However, with the Cranes you fail to find anything to attach to the way we play. A national team is a collection of the best players in the country therefore the coach has the best players to make something out of them. The CECAFA team is full of some of the players who have had a good season so far in the likes of Allan Kyambadde, Hood Kaweesa, Milton Kariisa, but these have failed to click in Kenya. Apart from the mauling of South Sudan, the Cranes couldn’t crack Ethiopia, Burundi and then Zanzibar.
Most of the attacks looked clueless and very unstructured. There was little width with only Kariisa showing some intent, Tadeo Lwanga became visible when he slotted into defence, the best move we put together as a team was the goal set up by SC Villa’s Kyambadde.
This isn’t only limited to the CECAFA team. Micho’s team was set up to only get a result. As long as they got a result that was enough, it didn’t matter much how we did it. The end then justified the means, it got us to AFCON after 37 years of waiting.
If we ever want to be a power house on the continent, the likes of Zambia use their flying wingers well, the North Africans are very tactical like Europeans, the West Africans have mastered the art of combining grit with skill like Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Cameroon.
The new coach has a big job, if he keenly follows local soccer he will know our clubs have greatly improved in terms of style of play, these players can be trusted to play good flowing football.
It’s depressing to see very creative players like Kizito Luwagga, Farouk Miya, Muzamiru Mutyaba struggling to thrive in the Cranes set up. Part of this problem stems from having foreign coaches whose priority is results and not style given that they are looking out for their jobs.
A national team coach needs to be given time to be able to influence the way the team plays especially with all these regional tournaments like CECAFA and CHAN.
The progress shown by our local clubs has and needs to be replicated by the senior side. If the way the U20 side has played in the COSAFA is anything to go by, we can adopt and actually play good football.
