Kenya: All About the As

Pharis Kimaru

11 June 2011

Nairobi — In the aftermath of the Angola, Kenya match, my mind has broken things down into a bunch of As so here we go.

The first A is for Allan Wanga and the glorious chance he failed to bury right on the stroke of halftime. If Allan bothers to open his striker’s text book to page one, he will find a reminder of his basic job description which is basically to bury the ball into the net.

There is a reason we use the word bury when talking about goals because they do exactly that. If Allan Wanga had buried that, he would have buried Angola and their noisy fans along with the goal.

That goal would have killed Angola and right on the stroke of half time too. That chance could have put a whole new spin on our hopes for the African Cup of Nations in 2012.

The second ‘A’ is for approach, and the fact that Zedekiah Otieno got his correct. To play away with two strikers is a courageous thing, but his midfield was balanced and the selection of Titus Mulama was inspired as he brought quality and experience to the pitch and those two elements are important in such scenarios.

Next is ‘Anger’. Kenyan fans are full of it. The Angola goal was not offside, so the anger is justified but it is useless.

Let us not get mad, let’s get even. Let us get to CAN 2012 despite bad refereeing decisions and prove ourselves on that stage. All the anger in the world will not get the goal overturned.

Attitude is next and it is closely linked to the previous one. I thought the stars never recovered after the disallowed goal and that is just not right.

You get a bad decision but you keep your heads up, keep fighting and most importantly keep your concentration. Attitude is a big aspect of winning teams, you have got to keep your head straight and stick to the job even when you get sucker punched.

The next ‘A’ is for Angola and their goal which was scored courtesy of Manucho. I personally thought the goal was somewhat soft. Yes, Manucho is a big strong striker but you have to make him work for his header; make him have to battle you for his shot at goal.

So with two games to go Kenya are in third place with four points and a hugely hypothetical chance of making it through the group stages. To do so, we have to win our remaining two games against Guinea Bissau at home in September and then go to Uganda a few weeks later and win there. Yes, I just said win in Uganda.

Even after winning those two games we have to hope Angola and Uganda, who are almost untouchable, mess up in one of their remaining two games for us to overtake them into second but that depends on winning our remaining two games starting with Guinea Bissau in September.

The other option is we can still qualify as one of the highest ranked second paced teams provided we pip Angola into second place and score a lot of goals in the process.

Lastly FKL are apparently hot on the trail of a foreign coach who is understandably Serbian and from what I hear this one has apparently coached before in his life unlike the last fraud hired by these guys. Let’s wait and see if the deal goes through.

AllAfrica – All the Time