By Peter Mwaura
Pre-preparations before and during a tournament is always essential in any team set up and goes a long way in determining the team’s success in a championship. Today we focus on some of the AFCON team’s preparation and facilitation before and during the tournament.
The national football team Harambee Stars may have failed to go past the first round of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations after Cameroon and Benin played to a 0-0 draw to lock the homeboys out of the best third-placed teams but how their logistics were handled before and during the tournament is something that the Kenyan football fraternity has not experienced in decades.
Under the tutelage of Frenchman Sebastian Migne, a team of 27 players pitched camp in Paris for 19 days with the facilities giving them a better training environment ahead of their appearance in Egypt after 15 years of waiting.
Football Kenya Federation ensured that all the 27 players in France received 254,625 shillings each as earlier promised with the final 23 men receiving 509,250 shillings. Their payment was confirmed by FKF President Nick Mwendwa days before the team left for Cairo.
Two friendly matches were organized in Paris and Madrid respectively with the outcome giving the fans hope that this was the time the team would record history in the continental showpiece.
Kenya’s group opponent and tournament finalist Senegal had set aside 500million shillings for the pre-tournament camp in Spain for 17 days. Algeria on the other side conducted training in Algiers before heading to Qatar. Tanzania was forced to train in Cairo due to financial constraints but still no issues of players boycotting training due to unpaid allowances.
Zimbabwe players had threatened to boycott to play the tournament opener against Egypt following payment dispute with their federation. The squad had refused to train demanding payment of money they were owed by the federation for participating in the COSAFA championship.
This was just a day after the Cameroonian squad had refused to board their flight to Egypt amid a spat regarding bonus payment.
The usual script from African teams had just started to unfold, Nigeria who had a dispute with the financial stricken Nigerian Football Federation threatened to boycott training in the build-up to their match against Guinea with Ahmed Musa missing in the press conference because they had a very important meeting.
Uganda followed suit later and it took more than 12 hours to convince the players to resume training.
Unpaid bonuses and appearance fees, poor pre-tournament preparations have been the biggest undoing for African teams even in the world cup but slowly a new trend from up and coming powerhouses is changing things.