After the draws of 2021 AFCON African qualifiers conducted last Thursday at Aida Ballroom Marriott hotel,Zamalek, which saw Uganda pooled in group B with Burkina Faso, Malawi and winner between South Sudan & Seychelles, the official fixtures and their dates have been revealed.
Uganda Cranes will first wet their jerseys away from home when they visit the tricky stallions of BurkinaFaso on November 11th, 2019 before playing Malawi Flames in space of just 8 days.(19th,Nov,2019) here in Kampala.
The CECAFA region giants will return back in action on August 31st, 2020, hosting either Seychelles or South Sudan who are yet to be confirmed after their preliminary encounter.
On September 8th,2020, cranes will put on their boots to visit one of those two nations (Seychelles/South Sudan.
Between 5th and 13th of October 2020, Uganda will host Burkina Faso before Visiting Malawi between November 9th and 17th, 2019 in their last group game.
On paper, it literally looks like ‘already done’ qualification for Uganda, being the fact that its the only country in this pool which has played in just concluded Afcon,But it should get scared of BurkinaFaso and Malawi who nearly have the similar style of play which is physical attacking football.
Secondly, it will be very hard to take that Uganda who went upto round of 16 in recent AFCON will finish outside the two slots available for best 2 teams in each group qualifying to AFCON 2021 in Cameroon.
Uganda who are looking forward to make their third Afcon appearance in a row,are expected to face stiff competition from western side of BurkinaFaso who are ranked 59 in the world 21 positions ahead of Uganda which is ranked 80th according to FIFA ranking June this year.
BurkinaFaso has played at 11 AFCON championships compared to Uganda who has played only 7 and any other team in pool B.
However, The stallion haven’t won the tittle, but they have atleast been able to play the finals in six- years (2013)which is a visible experience compared to Uganda who last had finals in 1978.
It should be remembered that Uganda were in the same group with Burkina Faso in the 2017 AFCON qualifiers, which saw the cranes end the 39 year jinx.The cranes lost 1-0 away and drew 0-0 at home.
