The Uganda national football team head coach Jonathan McKinstry has come under fire from certain sections of the Ugandan sports fraternity for his comments on local-based players.
The Uganda Cranes tactician told the nation, via 93.3 KFM on Saturday, October 24 that his justification for picking an overwhelming number of professionals, that is, players who ply their trade in foreign leagues for the upcoming AFCON qualifiers double-header against South Sudan, was that they were simply better than their counterparts who still played in the Ugandan league; which in itself, went a long way in explaining why they were professionals.
McKinstry went ahead to prophesy that five years from now, there will not be a single player in the national team sourced from the Uganda Premier League. He attributed this to the fact that by then, the number of professional Ugandan footballers will be so large that there just won’t be any space for the locally based ones.
His comments understandably riled a few people, particularly those in media circles, who ascribed this as a disrespectful attack on the Ugandan league, and labelled McKinstry as a pessimist who wasn’t fair on locally-based players. But let us rise above the patriotic sentiments that propel us to love that which belongs to us, and you will see that indeed, McKinstry is right, on all possible angles.
For all the optimism we have about the development of our local league, it is a tad too unrealistic to think that in five years, it will be producing enough, let alone any players of international calibre, and that’s considering all things going right.
Jonathan McKinstry is right about the state of Ugandan football and a lot needs to change if players want to play in the big leagues
With that said, at present, at this particular moment in time, the Uganda Premier League is simply not producing too many players of national team material. As things stand, and as they always have, the most accurate barometer of a Ugandan footballer’s abilities is whether or not he can earn a move to a better team in a better foreign league and then thrive there. That’s the litmus test for quality.
The fact of the matter is that McKinstry’s job will be judged on results. He has so far done well, as he is yet to lose a game in the year or so he has been in charge. But even that hasn’t been enough to placate a lot of people, who insist that this so far unblemished record is embellished by the quality of opposition McKinstry’s Cranes have faced.
They argue that any progress made under the former Rwanda head coach can only be judged based on results against the continent’s better national teams.
Those results will not be positive unless McKinstry takes the more obvious path, which is to summon the players who give the team the best chance at winning. In international football, and especially in Uganda right now, there is simply no space or time for player development.
A national team manager’s job is to collect the country’s best available players, morph them into a homogeneous unit and win. Anything less than that and they will, invariably and in more cases than not, find their heads on the chopping board.
While I understand where McKinstry’s critics come from regarding the prospects of the local league, it is simply not realistic. Therefore, it is better to cut McKinstry some slack, and not just criticise for criticism’s sake.
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