Afcon Qualifiers: Kenya decided to rebuild after Comoros defeat – Mwendwa

Football Kenya Federation President Nick Mwendwa has come out to explain why Harambee Stars have many new players.

Ahead of their two Africa Cup of Nations qualifying matches against Egypt and Togo, coach Jacob ‘Ghost’ Mulee overlooked a number of senior players among them captain Victor Wanyama, Ayub Timbe, Erick Johanna, and Johanna Omolo, and instead, went for a squad of local-based players.

And it is the local-based players who played a huge role as Kenya secured a 1-1 draw against Egypt at Kasarani Stadium before they travelled to Lome to beat Togo 2-1 and end their Afcon campaign on a high.

FKF boss Mwendwa has confirmed they decided to change the team after the draw against Comoros at home and the defeat away which ended their slim hopes of making a second successive appearance at the Afcon finals to be held in Cameroon.

“After drawing and losing against Comoros at home and away, we decided to rebuild this team, we decided to reboot it and we wanted to give it a new life, we wanted to change the team and I want to thank God, we also had a coach, who was thinking on the same lines and knew what we wanted,” Mwendwa told Goal on Wednesday.

“And you can see yesterday [Monday] we had six new players in the starting squad, it was a risk taken from the coach because had we lost in the match, we could have got in trouble with fans back home but the young boys passed with flying colours.

“I want to thank the coach for playing the players, for believing in the players, and now we went away to Togo and we used the same new players, and I am very excited because we have opened new ground for Kenyan football., we want to be successful in the next 10 years and I know it is possible.

‘I can smell something big coming from this squad, I am seeing a new squad of confident players ready to take on Africa, we are building something good for Kenyans, all I can say is watch this space, something good is coming up for the country.”

On Kenya winning their first away match since 2015 when they beat Mauritius, Mwendwa said: “It is a shame that we had not won away since 2015, and a big shame we had not managed to do it ever since I took office as the federation boss.

“We had a difficult match [against Togo] because we wanted to win away, we won last in 2015 in Mauritius and 2013 in Seychelles and the last was 2003 in Cape Verde. So we thank God we have won away, and we need to make it a habit of winning away from home, it should open the door for us to win our away matches.”

Some of the new players in the Kenya squad include goalkeeper James Saruni, defender Clyde Senaji, and forward Hassan Abdallah.