Under the management of French tactician S\u00e9bastien Desabre, the Uganda Cranes enjoyed a historic run during the 2019 AFCON group stages, showcasing a more offensive and confident style of play than in previous years.<\/p>\n
\u200bPitted in Group A alongside the hosts Egypt, a highly-rated DR Congo, and Zimbabwe, the Cranes defied the odds.<\/p>\n
\u200bUganda 2\u20130 DR Congo: The Cranes secured a commanding opening win with goals from Patrick Kaddu and Emmanuel Okwi. This marked Uganda\u2019s first AFCON victory since 1978.<\/p>\n
\u200bUganda 1\u20131 Zimbabwe: In a hard-fought draw, Emmanuel Okwi found the net again, while captain Denis Onyango kept the team in the game with a million-dollar save.<\/p>\n
\u200bUganda 0\u20132 Egypt: Despite the scoreline, the Cranes dominated large portions of the match against the hosts, forcing several world-class saves from the Egyptian goalkeeper.<\/p>\n
\u200bThe journey eventually ended in a fierce Round of 16 clash against Senegal. Uganda suffered a narrow 1\u20130 loss to the eventual finalists; Sadio Man\u00e9 scored the decisive goal, though Onyango famously saved a Man\u00e9 penalty later in the match.<\/p>\n
\u200bReflecting on this era, National Teams Officer Paul Mukatabala explained to FUFA TV why the 2019 squad outperformed the 2025 team. He pointed to a crucial difference: timing and preparation.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u201dPeople talk about Desabre, but the real difference was that the 2019 tournament took place when leagues elsewhere were on break,\u201d Mukatabala revealed.<\/p>\n
\u201cDesabre was able to work with all his players from day one. He was able to \u2018squeeze and cook\u2019 them. When you have talented players, the greatest advantage is fitness, being able to cover every inch of the pitch for 90 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u200bMukatabala noted that by the time the team landed in Egypt, they were at their physical peak. \u201cYou could see it in their play; they ran DR Congo ragged and never stopped. In contrast, I believe our 2025 team lacked that level of full match fitness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u200bThe difference in preparation was reflected in the results: the 2025 campaign concluded with only a single point from three games, with the team conceding seven goals and scoring only twice.<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under the management of French tactician S\u00e9bastien Desabre, the Uganda Cranes enjoyed a historic run during the 2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[527,153,482],"class_list":{"0":"post-11091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uganda","8":"tag-afcon-2025","9":"tag-uganda","10":"tag-uganda-cranes"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}