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

Last Chance for the Harambee Stars

Kenya’s coach, fresh from ‘overachieving’ at the recent African Nations Championship (CHAN), South African legend, Benni McCarthy, detailed his opinions on Gambia and his hopes for Kenyan football to journalists ahead of the Harambee Stars’ last chance. To have any chance of making the trip to next year’s World Cup, Kenya knows that they must win and win well.

“They [the Gambia] have some quality players as well and it was an exciting game, 0-0 first half and then second half there were six goals, three apiece – one missed penalty as well – so, yeah, I think it was the exciting game as well, but I think now, we have been together much longer than what we played in the first game, so I expect the players, if our organisation is better and we can definitely get a better result than what we did the last time against them and hopefully on the day three points, because that’s what we want to achieve,” McCarthy said.

The Passion and the Glory

McCarthy has no doubt that he is coaching a very talented group of players.

“The highs has definitely been what this team has brought to the country, like it’s a football country now,” McCarthy told journalists.

“You know, the passion, everywhere you go, you can’t even walk the streets without people stopping you and congratulating you, but the recognition that the players are getting, which is for me the most important, because when you work hard and you put everything in one basket to try and achieve something and have success and then get recognition for it because it means that your hard work pays off and can only be a blessing to me and the technical team because now players knows when you do put in the work you get the recognition and you get your flowers, so they want to have more of that, so moving forward it gives everyone that belief when you come into the national team you know it’s going to change your life.”

Life-changing Opportunity

He and his players that this a life-changing opportunity for them.

“It’s going to change your life for the good and that’s what we want,” he said.

“We want a national team that’s competitive – everybody that comes here compete for places, but in a harmonious [way] that we’re still a family and we all, you know, after training and after matches, we can all still fist-pump each other and with boys, we can go for a drink together, because you don’t compete like literally beating each other up and for me that’s been the best part of taking this job, just to see a bunch of tough players coming together and working hard, but wanting the same success for each other that they want for themselves.”

The Ultimate Goal

He wants to see this squad develop further and achieve their full potential.

“Like I said, hopefully, this continue, you know, this rollercoaster continue and this country seems to get stronger and stronger by the day,2 he said. “The more we are together as a national team and that there’ll be way more success than what there’s been in the past and people will talk about this generation of Kenyan players for the next hundred years and that’s the ultimate goal.”

McCarthy wants to see this squad play in a World Cup.

The Biggest Highlights

“That’s probably one of the biggest highlights in any player’s career if you have ambition,” he said. “If you want to achieve things, captain will tell you, before you consider even getting close to life after football you want to be able to play or participate in a World Cup Final, in a World Cup stage, group stages, and that is the ultimate – then, you reach the pinnacle of football, so yes, I think the intention is to really give it everything we have.

He knows it is a very difficult task this time.

“Like I said, it is a kind of impossible task at the moment when you look at how far ahead the front wolfpack are, but for us it’s just about every match at the time and doing the best that we possibly can to try and collect maximum points and you never know, FIFA might come up with something, one thing that gets us qualified and then you get that pass through into the play-offs and then anything is possible there, so I think you don’t want to take for granted, so you just try for our sake to play every game like it is our last game and to get us the maximum points that we possibly can and then see how things pan out with other teams,” he said.

“People might lose points along the way and then you just sneak in right at the death and then you get an opportunity via the playoffs, so that possibility is always in the back of our minds.”