\n
Benni McCarthy has said Kenya can “surprise a lot of people” by qualifying for the 2026 World Cup after being appointed as the country’s new head coach.<\/b><\/p>\n
The South African has signed a two-year deal that will see him lead the Harambee Stars up to the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations – a tournament which will be held on home soil in East Africa, with Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda co-hosting.<\/p>\n
McCarthy, 47, replaces interim coach Francis Kimanzi, who has been in charge since Turkish coach Engin Firat stepped down at the end of last year.<\/p>\n
His first games will be this month’s World Cup qualifiers away in The Gambia and at home against Gabon.<\/p>\n
“Participating in the World Cup, it is one of the most special feelings in the world and I want to give them that,” McCarthy told BBC Sport Africa.<\/p>\n
“With the right mindset and dedication from the players, and the willingness to learn and willingness to give everything they’ve got for the course, I think we can surprise a lot of people by still qualifying for the World Cup.”<\/p>\n
Kenya are currently fourth out of six teams in Group F with five points from four games \u2013 five points behind leaders Ivory Coast.<\/p>\n
Only the group winners qualify automatically for the tournament in Canada, Mexico and the USA. The four best runners-up from the nine groups will have a second chance via the play-offs.<\/p>\n
McCarthy, who is South Africa’s all-time record goalscorer, represented his nation at the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, but Kenya have never qualified for the competition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benni McCarthy has said Kenya can “surprise a lot of people” by qualifying for the 2026 World Cup after being appointed as the country’s new head coach. The South African has signed a two-year deal that will see him lead the Harambee Stars up to the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations – a tournament which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26965,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26963\/revisions\/26965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}