Uganda Cranes head coach Milutin “Micho” Sredojevic has said that his team needs a win and prayers in the last qualifier to make it to the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Cote D’Ivoire in 2024.
Victory over Niger at the Marrakech Stadium alone won’t be enough, as it will need to come along with prayers that Tanzania get a beating from Algeria.
The latter is already through as Group F leaders, Tanzania in second have seven points, Uganda follow with four while Niger, who are already out, have two points.
“It is a campaign that we entered in an enormous risk with a transitional squad that has nine players from the finalists of AFCON U20 in Mauritania, 2021 with only few senior players and four survivors from the team of 2019 when we played AFCON, that is Emma Okwi, Khalid Aucho, Faruku Miya and Joseph Ochaya,” said Micho.
“I need to say before even starting this qualifier we knew there were two parts in this group; one is Algeria the run-away leaders and the second one is Tanzania and Niger.”
“Now Niger is out of contention due to points and us (Uganda) and Tanzania are perfectly still in. We have a perfect chance that if we win against Niger, we qualify for the AFCON.”
“We have new inclusions consisting of the New York Red Bulls duo Kasule Ibrahim and Sebufu Frank and the rest of the players that we have in Uganda in a competitive way. We shall go all out in attack. The intention is to win,” the Serbian added.
After making back-to-back appearances at the continent in 2017 and 2019, Uganda has missed out on each of the last two, with a third looking more likely than not.
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