Miya’s miracle

Mutebi who has worked on youth development in Ugandan football for over twenty years adds former Cranes skipper Andy Mwesigwa as part of that group. He says Mwesigwa was not an exceptional player but he was a good leader and he led the team well. Mutebi says better days could be ahead for the Cranes team that just overcame their biggest hurdle yet. “If they are well looked after, we shall even qualify for 2019 because that is what teams that are grown organically do.”

“If Miya scores, it is not by accident, it is because he has grown in confidence,” he added. He has worn the skipper’s armband for the Cranes a couple of times and won a few international trophies. It is not empty puffing-up when his colleagues call him the “golden boy”. He was named best player in 2015. Mutebi could also have added that Miya is a near 6-foot and physically strong lad whose stint on loan to Belgian club Standard Liège is working out quite impressively.

Mutebi says, in the past, national team managers have not worked at growing the team organically as a management principle in Ugandan football. Instead, player development was an ad hoc matter. He also mentions growing the national team; the Cranes, as a local brand. He says he tried to do this when he was coach; by bringing local corporate sponsors and other people to appreciate the Cranes as national brand.

“Even when Lawrence Mulindwa came in, he put more efforts on the national team,” Mutebi says.

Micho is, however, in many ways different. He has had several coaching stints with local Ugandan clubs and insists on making every slot on the Cranes team very competitive for each of the players. In his book, no player is guaranteed a position on the team.

“There is always fighting for a place on the Cranes team,” is how he described it to The Independent in a recent interview.

He has also set his sights on breaking the Cranes’ long-running jinx of failing to win away. After winning away four times in the last two years; recently; in Togo, Mauritania, Comoros, and Botswana, Micho with an air of confidence told The Independent that the Cranes under him, “have found a formula for winning away matches”. He says it is all about experimenting and building confidence, working according to a well-laid out technical plan.

“The team had much more experience in the last fourteen months from June 2015 up to September 2016,” he says of his young charges(with an average age of 25 years in camp). “The team has gone through a lot of re-shaping through both a technical master plan and development competitions they have had in the Under-23 tournaments, CECAFA cup, CHAN, and international friendlies.”

Micho can now bask in achieving what had seemed impossible –although Cranes has participated in theAfrica Cup on five previous occasions. But as the throngs of fans of the Uganda side showed when they turned up in droves to cheer the team, the passion around the team can be quite intoxicating. The same excited fans that carried him high after the win can easily turn critical when things do not go right.

Miya’s failing to pass the ball to Oloya could become part of what could go wrong.

Football is a team sport. Teamwork, together with passing the ball, and putting in long hours of hard work are often ranked far above development of individual skills of each player.

Micho’s approach appears to be focused on exposing the team to as many international games as possible, with emphasis on passing, formations, positioning – in other words, on teamwork.

In reality, players on the Ugandan national team need to focus on winning one-onone encounters with opponents on the pitch. The moments when Comoros were threatening the Ugandan goal showed how much the side has to do at an individual level in defense. The opposite is to be said after watching how many times the Cranes came close to scoring; including the fumble after Comoros keeper Ahamada saved Oloya’s shot on the goal line, the other that hit the woodwork, not to mentionMassa’s missed header.

These players need to rework their game in situations like these that require complex skills, dribbling, and feinting. Each player needs to do drills of these complex skills over and over again so that they confidently and seamlessly execute under pressure. They need to focus on scoring goals. That attitude explains why it is possibly a good thing that Miya did not pass that ball to Oloya and Oloya passed it to him.

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editor@independent.co.ug