{"id":4534,"date":"2025-10-07T13:09:59","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T12:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/?p=4534"},"modified":"2025-10-07T13:09:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T12:09:59","slug":"the-greater-aim-and-objective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/2025\/10\/07\/the-greater-aim-and-objective\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greater Aim and Objective<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Ambitions and Hope?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya\u2019s Harambee Stars know that their hopes of qualifying for the next World Cup are slim, but hope continues. Benni McCarthy, their coach, remains hopeful, but realistic. He believes that his squad have the talent to achieve the pinnacle for Kenya \u2013 play in a World Cup Finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Benni McCarthy and Michael Olunga<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know taking over, coming in here, it was already a couple of games in where you were starting on the back foot, so it\u2019s impossible, but if not this one the next one,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201c2030 is around the corner, so, you know, we\u2019ll be looking for 2030 too, so I\u2019ll still be young enough and I\u2019m sure skipper has plenty of muscle in that legs to last him for 2030 and then we\u2019ll go again, but this is the one that we\u2019re participating in, so we\u2019ve got four qualification matches left and we want to get maximum points for every one of that and then we sit at the last game with our calculators out \u2013 maybe there\u2019s a chance, so that\u2019s what we\u2019re hoping for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, it is a very tall order \u2013 the maximum they can get is 18 points, just three more than the second placed team in the group already have. They need to win all four remaining matches and hope for slip-ups above them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clinging to Hope<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCarthy cannot abandon hope while the slightest trace of a miracle occurring remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a coach, as a technical team, you have to be flexible,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cYou can\u2019t just think it\u2019s that way or the highway, so yeah, we adapt to what we have, you know, and that this moment in time, it\u2019s exciting times because now you\u2019ve got probably the best players in the country at your availability at the international stage and we\u2019ve got a really, really strong and exciting team, so what you have at your disposal, you try and go for that and go for the jugular and that is every single game you play, you want to win, because I think the team \u2013 the squad \u2013 is good enough to win every match and probably even to get out of the group stages, but I started a year too late, so you\u2019re already on the back foot, but so far extremely happy with the team that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capable<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The odds are against McCarthy being able to deliver qualification for the World Cup are very slim and the chance of qualification for the next AFCON has gone too. This means that despite the rekindling of national pride through the CHAN came too late. Consequently, the more realistic aim is targeting the 2027 AFCON which Kenya will co-host with its East-African neighbours Tanzania and Uganda. But McCarthy remains optimistic \u2013 he has to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re more than capable of winning every game \u2013 I hope so \u2013 and then continue on that path for the next big assignment that comes up in our way, which is probably the African Nations Cup where we will be the host and then we focus on getting the best available players for that camp and the best team that will give this country the same joy that we had when he had the CHAN boys here \u2013 no expectations but you excel beyond what people expected you [were] capable of because that\u2019s the quality of players that this country has to offer and I think when it comes to them, the pool of players that we have will be far more greater than what we\u2019ve had in the CHAN.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (September 4th 2025) Ambitions and Hope? Kenya\u2019s Harambee Stars know that their hopes of qualifying for the next World Cup [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[88,1316,166,1547,832,646,1368,256,325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534"}],"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=4534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4535,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534\/revisions\/4535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}