By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (September 4^th 2025)

“This country deserves to have not just being recognised as an athletics country, but as a great football nation as well,” – Benni McCarthy

Over and Out?

Benni McCarthy, Kenya’s coach knows that his charge have a very slim chance of qualifying for next year’s World Cup. They need to win all their remaining matches and hope for a few favours too.

He is one of the few to distinguish himself in both African and European football. As a player McCarthy won league titles in the Netherlands, Portugal and South Africa as well as trophies in Spain as well. He won the UEFA Champions League and other trophies with Porto as well. In international football he won the Afro-Asian Cup in 1997 and was a runner-up at the 1998 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).

After he hung up his boots he went into coaching, including a spell as Manchester United’s Strikers’ coach before taking up his current position as Kenya’s coach, taking over from Engin Firhat during the current World Cup Qualification campaign.

McCarthy took over a difficult campaign. Kenya is all but out – its hope is mathematical. “In terms of qualifying for the World Cup, we are hopeful but it’s mission impossible because first and second are at 16 and 15 points and we’re sitting at 6, so if you win your four remaining games you go to 18 points, so that’s something almost impossible, but we’re hopeful and we want to just finish this campaign on a really high [note], so the remaining matches – every match from now on that we play – we want to be successful,” McCarthy told journalists ahead of facing Jonathan McKinnstry’s Gambia tomorrow.

“We want to win and we want to make a good account for ourselves because we know what we’re building for and so we hope we can restore some clarity and leave the country on a high because we know a little bit of success – look how we brought the country together and everyone is becoming football crazy in this country and it’s amazing to see, so we want to continue that trend.” So, what is the plan and realistic target?

McCarthy’s Vision

Kenya’s run to the quarter-final of the recent African Nations Championship (CHAN) raised expectations and hope of the resurgence of Kenyan football. “I said when I was given the job, it was never going to be easy,” McCarthy explained.

He then went into greater detail of his vision.

“I knew there was talent and there were some well-established players, but everything good takes time, so it was just about me having the time with team and trying to build on something special, so that when we do get to a certain level, when we do get to AFCON 2027, I think we want to build a squad that doesn’t just compete in the AFCON but is a squad that we strongly believe can go to the semi-final, to the final and maybe even lift the AFCON 2027 – that was my vision.”

Aims and Targets

McCarthy continued, detailing why he took the job and what he hopes to achieve.

“That was what I expected and wanted for myself taking this opportunity,” McCarthy said, “and then CHAN came quicker than expected and the same ambition was for the CHAN as well and I think that the preparation that we had was good and we had a remarkable run up in CHAN and you saw the progress and where we took the team in such a short space of time, so with time and having even all your bigger guns back with the national team, we feel that we can achieve and, like I said, this country deserves to have not just being recognised as an athletics country, but as a great football nation as well, so that’s the plan and so far we’re on the right track and hopefully when it comes to those celebrations that is the end goal to see a Kenyan national team – hopefully this generation of Kenyan players that we have present – that will be the first Kenyan team that qualifies for World Cup qualifiers for World Cup competition and hopefully AFCON champions as well.”

Those are his hopes for the near future.

“I know it’s dreams, but you have to dream big in terms to achieve anything, so that is that aim from when we started to where we ae now,” McCarthy said. “The progress is there for everyone to see and we hope that we can continue in fine style getting there.