Stars need to prepare for 2021 Afcon

The 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying draw was done in Cairo on Thursday, ahead of the tournament to be played in Cameroon. The draw pitted Kenya’s Harambee Stars in Group G where they will face 2019 hosts Egypt, alongside Togo and Comoros.

On paper it looks an easy draw for Kenya considering that the top two teams in the 12 groups will automatically book a slot in the finals, but that might not be the case if we take everything for granted.

We might think that Comoros, for example, will be the whipping boys in the group and that we can also easily beat Togo and qualify together with Egypt, but after what we saw in the 2019 qualifiers and finals where the likes of Mauritania and Madagascar booked their place in the final and played well, we should plan well for the qualifiers. The first round of matches will be played from November 7 to 11 and that is not far, so we should put plans in place to ensure that we have the best preparations.

We know that our players are still licking their wounds after a bad outing in Egypt, but if they want to qualify they should forget about the negative things that happened in Egypt and just pick valuable lessons ahead of the 2021 tournament in Cameroon.

Remember, we got lucky in the 2019 qualifiers after Sierra Leone was banned by Fifa, something which we might not be lucky to benefit from this time around hence the need to have sound preparation and a good start in November. Over to you Football Kenya Federation and coach Sebastien Migne to ensure that this happens.