For a country that had taken nearly four decades without playing at the Africa Cup of Nations championship, Uganda Cranes assistant coach, Moses Basena has singled out the major achievement of qualifying as the main stepping stone for Uganda’s football.
Assistant to Serbian tactician, Milutin Sredejovic, Basena showers special praise to the players, technical staff, FUFA administrators, Government, media and the fans for the collective teamwork effort.
Also doubling as the The Saints head coach back in the Uganda Premier League, the veteran Ex-Uganda Cranes international is overwhelmed by the positives generated for just playing at AFCON finals again after such a long time.
Talking to Kawowo Sports at the team base in Gabon, Hotel Du Parc in Port Gentil, Basena acknowledges the effort of the key stake holders in football administration, technical and management;
First of all, i thank the players for the job well done right from the qualification process. This alone (playing at AFCON) after a long spell of patient building and diligence is good enough to show us the right directional path.
At times tagged as a strict disciplinarian, Basena’s philosophy of life – fronting working ideologies has often worked to perfection and instead has lured more to his corner in the same vein a pollinated flower does to a bee.
“That’s the way I was brought up. I show you the right thing and how it is supposed to be done then we become friends and work together to achieve,” he says of his working policy.
Going forward, Basena is quick to acknowledge the fact the AFCON 2017 has been a learning path for the players, coaches and administrators.
We have seen and known so many things. A lot has been learnt and we shall not remain the same.
A peep into Basena’s technicalities of the game diary, he believes that a tournament of the AFCON magnitude has helped them at decision making.
Decision making is key in a football game. Then, making that right decision at the right time is another thing altogether.
We have learnt the hard way because we lost the first game to Ghana but we have to better our performance and way of response in the subsequent games.
How strong we are will never be measured by the loss to Ghana but how we perfectly recover.
He highly rates Coach Micho for the passion, inspiration and religious nature as a person.
Coach Micho is very religious. That is one thing i have admired of him among many other positives a person.
Basena’s school of thought comes at a time Uganda is looking at how to make qualification to the international events as the FIFA World Cup, AFCON and CHAN a habit.
Already FUFA has put in place a project code named ‘Cameroon 2019’ ensured to see Uganda qualify once again for the next AFCON tournament.
Uganda is in group L of the 2019 AFCON qualifiers alongside Lesotho, Cape Verde and neighbors Tanzania.
The qualifiers are expected to kick off in June 2017.
