Mckinstry: Why Standard Of National Team Football In Africa Has Improved

Uganda Cranes head coach Jonathan Mckinstry says that African teams have started to develop tactically.

The Northern Irishman was speaking with Leon Solms in Career Magazine about the African Football and the legacy of the 2020 FIFA World Cup on the continent.

Born July 16, 2020, Mckinstry who signed for Cranes in September 2019, has also coached Sierra Leone and Rwanda.

“I definitely feel now in more recent years, you have started to see teams develop a lot more tactically. Yes, there’s been foreign coaches, but there is also been great African coaches who have come into the likes of Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and even DR Congo with Florent Ibenge,” Mckinstry is quoted by Career Magazine.

“They have really started to develop a style, its because they have given coaches time – its not just one or two years. These are guys who have been in their roles for four or five years that have been able to develop tactically.

“They are still some nations who give coaches game-by-game contracts, how can you hope for a coach to develop a playing style when he knows that if he loses a game, he doesn’t have any security?”

Jonathan Mckinstry. Courtesy

On three different occasions, African teams have advanced to the World Cup Quarter Finals.

African football rose to a greater height in 2010 when South Africa successfully hosted the FIFA World Cup, the first on the African soil.

However, Mckinstry says that there is no tangible benefit for an African team since then:

“I know that was a big selling point at the time in the corridors for FIFA etc but am not sure that the world cup had any tangible benefit to football in say, Sierra Leone, for example.”

“If you asked people their general opinion of the Africa cup of nations 10 or 15 years ago, they would have said; Individuals, exciting lots of goals, quite poor defending. There was really exciting football and really talented players but the joy of watching the Africa Cup of Nations 15 years ago was for those individual moments.

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