Firstly, it is refreshing to see hitherto unknown minnows like Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea and The Gambia playing good football. To see Cape Verde, a country with a population of just 580,000, play that well makes me cringe with frustration about Ugandan football. In fact, the total population of the abovementioned countries is less than that of Kampala alone.
Yet Ugandan football remains amateurish, as though there is no talent coming through. The thing is, Uganda is one of the best on the continent when it comes to boardroom football. Fufa holds endless clinics, workshops and symposiums for referees, coaches and administrators so regularly that hardly a week goes by without such meetings.
There is hardly any effort to unearth players to take the country forward. Unfortunately, these 'Tutegeere Omupiira' rumblings have never yielded anything apart from enriching the top clique running the game. If they had, Caf would have recognized some Ugandans for roles at Afcon, but it is frustrating that there are none even amongst the 56 referees and 12 VAR officials.
For clarity, this should not be a surprise because over the past six Afcon editions, Uganda has only had two assistant referees in Dick Okello and Mark Ssonko. Yet in the years before, Ugandan referees used to regularly feature at the continental showpiece.
In many ways, this is a damning indictment on Moses Magogo's Fufa and the Uganda Premier League (UPL) board that have failed to raise the officiating standards in the country. This also proves that Fufa's referee workshops are just a waste of time if the federation cannot lobby for them to officiate at the highest level.
So, the absence of this high-level experience trickles down to domestic football, where wrong calls by match officials are the order of the day. You could add that the damning indictment of poor standards of refereeing is part of the reason fans shun to watch league games.
Another interesting stat at Afcon is that Ivory Coast is using six stadiums for the tournament, which are finely spread throughout the country. Three of these were unveiled last year after four years of construction and going by the impressive attendance, it looks like a well-thoughtout plan.
This raises a serious food-for-thought for Afcon 2027, which is to be jointly hosted by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Whereas Kenya and Tanzania can afford to simply refurbish their current stadia, Uganda has to construct a new stadium to supplement Namboole stadium.
Unfortunately, we are behind schedule because since being announced as co-hosts in September, 2023, there is hardly anything tangible to show we are on course to meet Caf requirements on infrastructure. The question remains: is Fufa taking any notes from the tournament?
The author is SC Villa President Emeritus
