Babu optimistic despite Stars drowning in Ghanaian quicksand

The national beach soccer team, Harambee Sand Stars head coach, Rajab Idd Babu, avers his side is headed for better fortunes despite the hiding they received from Ghana in their Africa Cup of Nations two-legged qualifier.

Speaking upon the team’s arrival in Nairobi, Babu asserted the experience gained despite their crushing 17-4 defeat on aggregate over the two-legs will serve as a foundation for the development of beach football in Kenya.

This was the first time for the team to feature at continental qualifiers where they were given a chastening lesson by the traditional African football giants.

‘’I’m happy for my boys. You gain experience by playing many games against the best. It was a great improvement from the 3-10 home defeat of to the 7-1 away loss. We are learning very fast. It’s a matter of time before Kenya becomes one of the beach soccer power house in Africa if not in the world,” the optimistic tactician offered.

Babu said the thrashing against a side ranked eighth in Africa should be a wakeup call to the national and coastal belt County governments to invest in the growth of the beach game.

“We need to start a beach soccer league like Ghana and construct a beach soccer stadium at Pirates,” he urged as he revealed focus now turns to the second edition of the International Beach Soccer Tournament set for Malindi in December.

Football Kenya Federation (FKF) boss, Nick Mwendwa, announced plans were afoot to establish a national beach soccer league after witnessing the pasting against Ghana in the first leg in Mombasa that left him encouraged the arm of the beautiful game has a future.

“It is sad we have lost by a big margin, but it was a good start for Kenyan beach football. It is time for FKF to get boys play competitive beach football, but we are happy we have started from somewhere.

“We are going to start conducting coaching and refereeing clinics to equip the technical bench and referees with new tactics. Players need to learn fast the rules governing the sport,” he remarked at the time.

The CAF Beach Soccer Africa Cup of Nations 2016 in Nigeria will have a distinct feeling of familiarity to it after seven of the eight teams that competed in the last edition also qualified for the finals.

Seychelles will be the only team missing when Africa’s strongest beach soccer teams meet in Nigeria from December 13 to 18 where they will not only play for the African crown, but to establish the two teams that will represent the continent at the 2017 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup in Bahamas 2017.

Seychelles qualified as hosts last time around, but did not enter the competition this time, leaving Libya as the only team to make it to Nigeria who did not play at the finals in 2015.

Of the 14 teams that entered the race for Nigeria, three withdrew before the qualifiers started, giving the North African trio Morocco, Egypt and Libya a bye into the finals.

That still left four ties to decide the remaining slots. Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Ghana and Madagascar joined the North Africans and hosts Nigeria.

Champions Madagascar, had to dig deep in their first leg against Mozambique to win 3-2 victory but had a much smoother ride in the return in Mahajanga winning 6-2, to go through 9-4 on aggregate.

Senegal beat Cape Verde Islands 7-2 win in the first leg before earning a convincing 5-2 victory in the return leg to book their ticket 12-4 on aggregate.

The final team to book their ticket to Nigeria was Côte d’Ivoire, who took on Tanzania for a place at the finals and progressed after 6-4 and 7-3 victories over the away and home legs.