With barely a month left to the commencement of the 6th Edition of the Total African Nations Championship final tournament to be played from 16th January to 7th February 2021 in Yaoundé, Cameroon, the Uganda National team head coach Jonathan Mckinstry has finalized his list for the local-based players that will feature.
Amongst these players are seven of our very own including but not limited to Goalkeeper Nafian Alionzi, defenders, Ashraf Mandela, and Patrick Paul Mbowa.
As part of the midfielders, team captain Shafik Kagimu and his deputy Saidi Kyeyune will feature along with Joackiam Ojera and talisman Steven Mukwala as the forwards.
The Cranes were pooled in Group C alongside Morocco, Rwanda, and Togo in Africa’s secondary continental event. This promises a lot of excitement.
The boys and their counterparts from the other Uganda Premier League clubs will participate in the PRE-CHAN Mini-tournament from 1st to 7th January 2021 in preparation for the competition.
Cameroon, like earlier highlighted, will be hosting the biennial competition and the games are meant to shape them ahead of the tournament. The Cranes (as the rest) will be part of the four teams invited as confirmed by the Cameroonian Federation.
The three invited teams have been asked to arrive in the West Africa nation by the end of December.
This pre-Chan mini-tournament will be played in Yaoundé from January 1-7, 2021 with four teams that qualified for Chan; Cameroon, Niger, Zambia, and Uganda.
The Cranes, who will be taking part in their fifth consecutive Chan tournament after featuring in the 2011, 2014, 2016, and 2018 editions, will face Rwanda on January 18 at the Stade de Unification in Douala, before tackling Togo on January 22 at the same venue. The final group game will be on January 26 against Morocco.
The Cranes have never progressed past the group stage of the competition and it is their ultimate goal this time round.
The tournament, which exclusively features players from each nation’s respective national championships, was supposed to be hosted by Ethiopia but was moved to Cameroon after the Ethiopian football authorities admitted the country was not ready to hold the event.
Only two teams can make it out of the group and we hope the boys can make the nation proud by finally breaking the jinx and making it out of the group.