EXCLUSIVE: Kenya coach Engin Firat raises concerns with CAF decision on CHAN Qualifiers

On Thursday, September 26th, the African body announced Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania as the co-host nations for the tournament, which features local-based players, scheduled to be played between 1-28 February 2025.

CAF further announced the road to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania will kick off with the first round of qualifiers on the weekend of 25-27 October 2024 and 1-13 November 2024. The second round of the qualifiers will be played on 20-22 December and 27-29 December 2024.

“Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania will participate in the qualifiers and in addition to their automatic qualification as hosts, the team achieving the best result in the CECAFA qualifiers will also advance to the final tournament,” read part of the statement from CAF.

Meanwhile, the qualification slots for the tournament were allocated as follows; Zones WAFU A, WAFU B, UNAF, UNIFFAC, and COSAFA will each have three qualifying teams while the CECAFA zone, which includes the three host countries, will receive an additional slot due to their automatic qualification as hosts.

As a result, the total number of teams qualifying for the final tournament will be increased to 19 teams.

Firat on why it is impossible to play CHAN qualifiers

With Kenya already taking part in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers and 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifiers, Firat believes it will not be fair for host nations to be involved in the CHAN qualifiers.

“I don’t know if it is official, I am still waiting to know if it is official but there are a lot of questions, why questions? Because these dates (that I have for example seen online and in newspapers) for the qualifiers are similar to the FIFA international days,” Firat told Flashscore, when asked on his opinion that co-host nations will play in the qualifiers.

“So if countries like us, who have a lot of players in the national team (local players) how can they do both of them? It is impossible, like of course other countries like Cameroon, they have only foreign-based players in their national team and can easily make two teams and there is no problem for them.”

Firat continued: “How to do both matches and how to focus, how to arrange it with the local league and also for Kenya the next problem, we cannot play any home matches, so this means again the CHAN team will have to play outside somewhere (all the qualifiers outside the country).

“It needs some budget, so there are so many questions, I don’t know what exactly will happen, but in my eyes anyway, our plans were to have a good camp in January and to have some friendly matches in January and then prepare the CHAN team properly for the CHAN tournament.”

Kenya’s national team Harambee Stars are currently taking part in the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifiers where they have so far played two matches.

Kenya, who are in Group J, kicked off their campaign with a 0-0 draw against Zimbabwe on September 6th at Nelson Mandela Stadium before recovering to beat Namibia 2-1 courtesy of goals from John Avire and Duke Abuya at Orlando Stadium in South Africa on September 10th.

Kenya will return to action with a double-header against Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions, with the first meeting set for October 11th in Yaounde before they face off again in Uganda on October 14th. “I cannot exactly say now what will happen, I don’t have 100% answer from everybody and I don’t know how will Tanzania and Uganda react to it. Let us see what will happen in the next weeks and we will know, then I can be able to give a good answer to everything,” offered Firat.

Apart from the AFCON qualifiers, Kenya are taking part in the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers where they have so far played four matches. They kicked off their journey with a 2-1 away defeat against Gabon on November 16th, 2023, before recovering to beat Seychelles 5-0 on November 20th.

The next two matches saw Kenya draw 1-1 against Burundi on June 7th, before snatching a vital point against African champions Ivory Coast in a 0-0 draw on June 11th. Kenya will return to the qualifiers with a matchday five fixture against the Gambia away on March 17th, 2025.

From the East African region, Uganda have qualified six times from the seven editions of the CHAN competitions that have been held since 2009. Rwanda have qualified four times, while Sudan and Ethiopia have each qualified for CHAN three times.

The DR Congo and Morocco are the most successful teams in this tournament with two titles each, followed by Tunisia, Libya and current champions Senegal with one title each. The tournament began life in 2009 with eight teams, which was doubled for the second edition up until the 6th and is currently contested by 18 teams since the 2022 edition.

Since the 2014 edition, matches of every edition of the tournament from qualification to the final are computed to calculate the FIFA World Rankings following its conclusion, which CAF exclaimed at the time as an important step for the competition's development.

Senegal are the current champions of CHAN after they defeated hosts, Algeria two years ago in Algiers.