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Kenya Under-20 lads seek redemption
Members of the Kenya Under-20 team train at Phoenix Hotel and Wellness Centre in Cairo yesterday in preparation for their Group ‘B’ match of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations tournament against Tunisia, which will be played Sunday.
Kenya Under-20 men’s football team players are under pressure to beat Tunisia today in their second Group “B” match of the 2025 Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Cairo, to have a realistic chance of qualifying for the quarterfinals of the tournament.
The match will take place at the 30 June Stadium in Cairo from 6pm (Kenyan time).
Having lost 3-2 to pre-tournament favourites and former champions Morocco in their opening match of the pool on Thursday night, Kenya Under-20, nicknamed ‘Rising Stars’ , must defeat Tunisia to keep alive their hopes of qualifying for the quarter-finals.
Kenya’s assistant coach Anthony Akhulia is optimistic that his team will beat Tunisia.
“We have worked on the mistakes that we made in our first match. We did not play badly (against Morocco), it is just that we made small mistakes that Morocco capitalized on. We may make some changes not just in the playing squad but also the tactic to employ in the match,” said Akhulia.
“We really need to score early and defend well as a team because in the other match (against Morocco), there were individual mistakes in our backline, and we also wasted many scoring chances. We want to convert such chances against Tunisia, and keep a strong defence line,” he added.
Defender Baron Ochieng said the team is ready to give its best against Tunisia.
“It was our first match and we really did our best. We only lost focus a little bit towards the end of the match. We have rectified the mistakes in training and hopefully tomorrow (today), we will give our best,” he said.
Tunisia also find themselves in a similar situation to Kenya’s, having lost 1-0 to seven-time champions Nigeria on Thursday night.
The top two teams in the three groups, and the two best third-placed teams will progress to the quarter-final stage of the tournament. All the four semi-finalists in the tournament will qualify for the 2025 Fifa Under-20 World Cup, to be played in Chile from September 27 to October 19 later in the year.
Kenya’s primary goal at the tournament is to qualify for the upcoming Fifa Under-20 World Cup.
Against Tunisia, the ‘Rising Stars’, coached by Salim Babu, will be hoping to be sharp in attack and steel at the back in the match. The two areas proved the team’s main undoing in Kenya’s loss to former champions Morocco. Thanks to their brave fight in the match, Kenya will head into the clash against Tunisia confident of a positive result.
Forward Lawrence Ouma and midfielder Hassan Beja were on target for Kenya in the 3-2 loss to Morocco.
Despite managing just 38.4 per cent of possession against Morocco on Thursday night, Kenya registered seven shots on target, Beja leading with three.
Defender Baron Ochieng had 50 touches of the ball for Kenya in that match, while goalkeeper Bernard Jairo saved six of the nine shots that he faced for 66.7 percent save rate.
Tunisia are winless in their last four tournament matches, and have lost the last three. The North Africans have not scored in 271 minutes.
In the other matches of the competition, defending champions Senegal were held to a 1-1 draw by a determined Central African Republic in a closely contested Group “C” match on Friday.
Senegal next face Ghana on Monday while the Central African Republic will clash with DR Congo the same day.
On the other hand, four-time champions Ghana settled for a 1-1 draw against DR Congo in their opening Group “C” on Friday.
In the match, Ghana rallied from behind to secure the crucial point.
Samuel Ntanda’s header in the 16th minute put DR Congo ahead but Musibau Aziz equalized for Ghana eight minutes later.
Despite dominating the second half, Ghana couldn’t score the winner.
