Fog around the Cranes goalkeeping position doesn’t bode well ahead of Algeria test today

There was a time when the Uganda Cranes always appeared uniquely unprepared for trips to North Africa. Encounters on the road, at any rate, seemed inescapably tied to hidings.

The 1996 and 2000 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifying campaigns offer a stinging glimpse of the intolerable levels of hardship. Identical 6-0 defeats in Alexandria (July of 1995) and Tunis (February of 1999) showed – more than anything – just how the Cranes remained severely stunted when up against North African competition.

Yet, conversely, not all such road trips left knots in the stomach. Algeria came off as a much less frightening prospect. At least on June 2, 1995 when Joseph Mutyaba struck in the 76th minute to earn Uganda a share of the spoils in Algiers. Even on June 20, 1999 – when the hard-wired inclination for the Cranes was to grind and fiddle after a chaotic trip ended with a borrowed kit being used – the Algerians didn’t wreak intolerable damage.

Given the circumstances, a 2-0 defeat was far from ruinous.
Home results were even better. Nearly two decades ago, your columnist was interviewing Mike Mutebi at a roadside hotel in Kampala. When Issa Ssekatawa thundered toward us, Mutebi couldn’t help himself. He addressed Ssekatawa with a deference I never thought possible. Even after Ssekatawa departed, swooning reactions still tripped off Mutebi’s slavering tongue.

Never, Mutebi revealed, had he seen a Ugandan play with an air of competence as Ssekatawa did during a 4-1 drubbing of Algeria in 1983. The Cranes transcended expectations at Nakivubo Stadium on that day. Critics had come to view them as a lightweight if anything because a year earlier Algeria stunned West Germany 1-0 at the 1982 Fifa World Cup.

The Cranes of course open their 2023 Afcon qualifying campaign today away to Algeria. The mistake is in imagining that the Cranes will be spared the embarrassment of a dim showing on account of the past. Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojević’s charges should be under no illusions. Unrelenting opponents await the Cranes.

It barely helps matters that the work put into preparing for today’s clash has neither been prodigious nor intensely imaginative. Particularly worrying is the continued inability to thin the fog around the goalkeeping position post Denis Onyango. Word on the grapevine that the South African-based net minder turned down or is weighing overtures to come out of retirement makes for bad optics.

The goalkeeping position is a fragile thing, but we have preferred to treat it roughly ever since Onyango called time on his international career. During the 2022 Fifa World Cup qualifiers, Micho alternated between Charles Lukwago and Ismail Watenga. For today’s match, the Serb and Fred Kajoba—the Cranes goalkeeping coach—will cast their lot with Lukwago, Nafian Alionzi and Giosue Bellagambi.

When the Cranes shipped half a dozen goals in Alexandria back in July of 1995, two goalkeepers were used inside 90 minutes—Abu Kigenyi and Livingstone Kyobe. There was uncertainty over what to bank on—the shot-stopping abilities of the pint-sized Kyobe or Kigenyi’s height and reach that saw him excel in the air whilst showing exceptionally good command of his area.

Twenty-seven years later, we find ourselves in a similar situation. The shoe fits. Perfectly, even. If Onyango is taken to be Sadiq Wassa, Alionzi is the answer to Kyobe and Lukwago the modern day Kigenyi. Hopefully, both Lukwago and Alionzi don’t end up logging minutes in Algeria today.

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Twitter: @robertmadoi