{"id":4524,"date":"2025-10-06T17:27:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T16:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/?p=4524"},"modified":"2025-10-06T17:27:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T16:27:15","slug":"mccarthys-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/2025\/10\/06\/mccarthys-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"McCarthy\u2019s Vision<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (September 4th<\/sup> 2025)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis country deserves to have not just being recognised as an athletics country, but as a great football nation as well,\u201d \u2013 Benni McCarthy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over and Out?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benni McCarthy, Kenya\u2019s coach knows that his charge have a very slim chance of qualifying for next year\u2019s World Cup. They need to win all their remaining matches and hope for a few favours too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After he hung up his boots he went into coaching, including a spell as Manchester United\u2019s Strikers\u2019 coach before taking up his current position as Kenya\u2019s coach, taking over from Engin Firhat during the current World Cup Qualification campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCarthy took over a difficult campaign. Kenya is all but out \u2013 its hope is mathematical. \u201cIn terms of qualifying for the World Cup, we are hopeful but it\u2019s mission impossible because first and second are at 16 and 15 points and we\u2019re sitting at 6, so if you win your four remaining games you go to 18 points, so that\u2019s something almost impossible, but we\u2019re hopeful and we want to just finish this campaign on a really high [note], so the remaining matches \u2013 every match from now on that we play \u2013 we want to be successful,\u201d McCarthy told journalists ahead of facing Jonathan McKinnstry\u2019s Gambia tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to win and we want to make a good account for ourselves because we know what we\u2019re 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 \u2013 look how we brought the country together and everyone is becoming football crazy in this country and it\u2019s amazing to see, so we want to continue that trend.\u201d So, what is the plan and realistic target?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCarthy\u2019s Vision<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya\u2019s run to the quarter-final of the recent African Nations Championship (CHAN) raised expectations and hope of the resurgence of Kenyan football. \u201cI said when I was given the job, it was never going to be easy,\u201d McCarthy explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then went into greater detail of his vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Benni McCarthy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI 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\u2019t 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 \u2013 that was my vision.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aims and Targets<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCarthy continued, detailing why he took the job and what he hopes to achieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was what I expected and wanted for myself taking this opportunity,\u201d McCarthy said, \u201cand 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\u2019s the plan and so far we\u2019re on the right track and hopefully when it comes to those celebrations that is the end goal to see a Kenyan national team \u2013 hopefully this generation of Kenyan players that we have present \u2013 that will be the first Kenyan team that qualifies for World Cup qualifiers for World Cup competition and hopefully AFCON champions as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those are his hopes for the near future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know it\u2019s 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,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cThe progress is there for everyone to see and we hope that we can continue in fine style getting there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (September 4th 2025) \u201cThis country deserves to have not just being recognised as an athletics country, but as a great [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[88,1316,166,1546,832,1545,57,256],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4527,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions\/4527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}