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Harambee Stars head coach Engin Firat was quite delighted after his youthful squad broke the jinx to register their first win ever in the 2020 Qatar World Cup qualifiers.
Stars beat Rwanda 2-1 at the Nyayo Stadium on Monday evening.
Firat highly praised his squad for exhibiting great character by brushing aside all the off-the-field concerns that loomed large ahead of the dead rubber encounter.
"When I came here of course I didn't have so much knowledge about the players and everything. The first squad I met, I thought most of them were alright but as I said also before, I can only check the quality not the character. The first match in Mali was a big shock on me and I told you I am not stupid, I learn from mistakes. The good side is that we are able to produce a lot of goal chances, we are much more creative, we are much more dangerous," said Firat.
"We not only want to play good football, we also want to think about the future. We are open to everyone who brings in talent to represent the country. Thing is we never know what is happening currently, management changes the rules, FIFA cancels the matches, the President gets arrested, FIFA bans us. You can not imagine, even with all my experience, I get so confused. The pressure on the players was crazy."
"So it also seemed that everything was going against us. You can see we have a young new squad. We have to also say that scouting has to be better in this country. If I as a foreigner can come here and find Timothy, a 17 year old, you can imagine how much talent you can find all over the country in just a year. So these are the points that people have to discuss. We are football people and we only want to play football," explained Firat.
"To be honest, I see a big future and big potential in this country. People already know what is going and therefore they are giving me the support. I see a future in this young squad and the boys have character and therefore I'm asking to stay." He revealed.
"I've only been here for a month and I have been able to change so many faces. This is what I mean, what happens if you have long term. When we talk about the future I think the national team needs a training center. And next to the training center I think we also need to make elite groups with the talents we have in the country from the club that we can work with them on a really high level. If we do these steps and can organize everything, plus the potential I can see, we can have a really good team which can play against the big ones," Firat told TeamKenya.
Closing off on African Football, Firat said,"It's not so easy to be honest. For example the National team has to go somewhere for training and we don't have a real field. If these kind of things can be solved, the quality of Football can rise in Africa."