Micho: Useful lessons were learned

by Staff Reporter

Monday Jan 23, 2023. 12:54

Uganda head coach Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojevic believes his players will benefit from their “tough” experiences at the 2022 African Nations Championships (CHAN).

The Cranes were eliminated from the tournament at the group stages following a 3-1 defeat to Ivory Coast at the Nelson Mandela Stadium in Algiers on Sunday night.

Micho’s side had led Group B after two matches and just needed to avoid defeat against the Elephants to book their place in the knockout stages.

However, the East Africans weren’t clinical enough in front of goal and paid the price as Sankara Karamoko (12′), Vignon Ouotro (27′) and Aubin Kouame Kramo (78′) scored for the Ivorians, with Moses Waiswa managing to pull one back from the penalty spot on 31 minutes.

Micho admitted the loss was hard to take but feels valuable lessons have been learned and will stand Uganda in good stead in the years to come.

“It is difficult to accept this result, but this is what happened. We dominated the game in terms of statistics, but in terms of goals we were not efficient,” the Serbian said in the post-match press conference.

“There are useful lessons that we learned. We played a good match and our players gave everything they had. We played three tough matches and this will benefit us in the future.

“We attacked well and we had several chances, but football is like this sometimes. You unfortunately cannot score at every attempt. We made some changes in order to increase the intensity of the front line, but the Ivorian goalkeeper prevented us from scoring, I consider him the man of the match because he did very well tonight.

“The good thing is that we created chances in the match, but conceding three goals was our downfall.”