CHAN 2024: Benni McCarthy Explains Why Harambee Stars Should Not Give Excuses Over ‘Group of Death’

Harambee Stars coach Benni McCarthy says the move to come back to Kenya from the CECAFA Four Nations tournament in Tanzania was meant to ensure there are no excuses when they struggle at the 2024 African Nations Championships (CHAN 2024).

Kenya are in a tough Group A, which also has Morocco and DR Congo, both two-time winners of the tournament, newly-crowned COSAFA champions Angola and Zambia and have a difficult task making it to the knockout round.

This is why McCarthy felt it was necessary to pull out of the tournament when it was deemed that the training facilities and pitches were not ideal for his team instead of taking a risk and heading into CHAN 2024 ill-prepared.

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“The group that we are in is a group of death and if we are not properly prepared, we will have shortcomings and people will ask questions and I feel like we did not want to make any excuses as to why if we have difficulties in the group stages,” McCarthy told the media on Wednesday.

“Coming back to Kenya was the best possible way that will give us the best chance of going past the group stages and even though it is such a difficult group because where we were meant to train was really not ideal.”

The South African tactician also feels the CECAFA tournament would have wasted a lot of valuable training time at sub-standard facilities and therefore, there was a need to return to Kenya quickly and continue their preparation at an optimum level.

“We were going to spend seven days there and two days of good training sessions and five days of looking at each other, high-fiving each other and hoping that we will be able to come back and compete and give the best that we can in CHAN,” he added.

“Because of those reasons, we decided the conditions were not favourable so we came back to Kenya where we have good facilities and pitches to train.”

Harambee Stars returned home on Tuesday and were back in training on Wednesday as their preparations gather steam ahead of the August 2-30 CHAN 2024 tournament.