Premium
Seychelles coach: New Fifa World Cup qualification format giving Island nations exposure
Walters Alfie of Seychelles (left) vies for the ball with Kenya's Stanley Omondi during their 2026 World Cup qualifiers match at Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, on September 9,2025.
Seychelles coach Ralph Jean-Louis has lauded the new Fifa World Cup qualification for giving footballers from Island nations in Africa and other low-ranked countries more exposure.
“We are now playing more matches in the new format, and that is helping our players get more experience of competitive football. In the previous format, we played only two matches,” Louis said.
Louis spoke on Monday at Kasarani ahead of Tuesday’s 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifier match between Harambee Stars and Seychelles.
Both teams were approaching the match after suffering defeats in their World Cup qualifier matches last week. Seychelles lost 4-0 at home to Gabon on Thursday, while Harambee Stars succumbed to a 3-1 loss to The Gambia at Kasarani on Friday.
Seychelles hosted their match against Gabon in Mauritius. They have been hosting their home matches in neutral locations due to the lack of a CAF-approved stadium in their country.
Kenya and Seychelles have nine and zero points respectively. Cote d'Ivoire lead the group with 19 points. Gabon are second with 18 points. Burundi follow them with 10 points. The Gambia lie fourth with seven points.
Tuesday's match was the seventh meeting between the two countries. Their first meeting took place in November 1992 in Tanzania during that year’s Cecafa Cup.
Harambee Stars won the match 2-1 and have gone ahead to win four of their subsequent six matches against The Pirates, including Tuesday’s win. A friendly match played in June 1998 in Nairobi ended in a draw, marking the only occasion Seychelles avoided defeat against Kenya.
Louis featured for Seychelles in that 1-1 draw. “Our coach then was Vojo Gardasevic, who had also coached Kenya,” Louis, who is on his fourth spell as Seychelles coach, said.
Low-ranked nations
Gardasevic is well-remembered in Kenya for orchestrating Harambee Stars’ 3-2 aggregate victory over Algeria in the preliminary round of the 1998 Fifa World Cup qualifiers.
Kenya defeated the North Africans 3-1 at home before losing 1-0 away in a match in which Harambee Stars had two players sent off.
The expansion of the Fifa World Cup saw CAF change its format for Fifa World Cup qualifiers to the advantage of low-ranked nations.
Before the expansion, due to limited Fifa World Cup qualifying slots for Africa (five), Fifa World Cup qualifiers were played in three rounds – a preliminary round featuring low-ranked nations, a group stage round comprising winners of preliminary round matches and teams that had been given a bye to the group stage round, and a play-off round contested by the 10 teams that topped their groups during the second stage of qualification.
As such, low-ranked countries that consistently got eliminated in the preliminary round ended up playing only two matches per Fifa World Cup qualification cycle.
For instance, Harambee Stars eliminated Seychelles in the preliminary round of the 2014 Fifa World Cup qualifiers with a 7-0 aggregate victory, 3-0 away and 4-0 at home. Harambee Stars then progressed to the group stages of the qualifiers as Seychelles endured another four-year wait to play a Fifa World Cup qualifier match.
However, with the expansion of the Fifa World Cup to 48 teams, from 32, all teams in the CAF region now enter the qualifiers in the group stage round, hence guaranteeing each team plays at least 10 World Cup qualification matches.
Seychelles has so far played seven 2026 Fifa World Cup matches and all of them have ended in defeat for The Pirates while conceding 34 goals and scoring only two. The seven losses include a 5-0 defeat against Harambee Stars in their home match, which they hosted in Abidjan in November 2023.
“We started our preparations for this match (Tuesday’s) two days after arriving in the country. We have been treated well, and every player in the squad is fit and healthy. We hope for a good result tomorrow,” Louis said.
Good performance
Louis was accompanied to the press conference by the team’s 25-year-old captain, Dean Mothé. Mothé, who was voted the Seychelles footballer of the year in 2024, had teased about giving a good performance against tomorrow. “We expect a tough match tomorrow, but we are ready. People should come to the stadium to see what we can do,” he said on Monday.
Mothé plays in the Seychelles Premier League for St. Louis Suns United, who won the competition last season.
Louis and Mothé described the Seychelles Premier League as competitive. “The league has players from Madagascar and other countries,” they said.
Louis, in particular, praised the performance of Madagascar at Chan 2024 which was co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Madagascar eliminated Kenya on the way to becoming the first country from an Island nation to reach an Afcon or Chan final. Madagascar lost 3-2 in the Chan 2024 final to Morocco.
“Every Indian Ocean nation is looking up to Madagascar. We have so many of their players in our league, and they are helping us develop. Even Comoros are doing well. We play these countries in the Indian Ocean Games, and when we perform well against them, we know we will be on the right track to doing well in Cosafa and other continental competitions,” Louis said.
Still, Louis hinted that Seychelles’ population of 120, 000 people limits its ability to produce enough talented footballers. Compared to more populous nations, Seychelles' small talent pool means that they have to give debuts to teenagers in international matches.
“I have four U17 players in my squad,” Louis said.
One of the teenagers in the Seychelles squad is 18-year-old Lorenzo Houareau.
In 2021, when he was 14 years old, he made history by becoming the youngest ever African player to score a goal in an international match during Seychelles' 8-1 loss to Burundi in a friendly tournament played in Comoros.
