Kenya’s Rising Stars to rotate against Tunisia in U-20 AFCON

Photo Credit – Football Kenya Federation (FKF).

Kenya national team U20 assistant coach Anthony Akhulia promised to make changes to their starting XI for their second Group B fixture of the TotalEnergies CAF U20 Africa Cup of Nations at the 30 June Stadium in Cairo, Egypt on Sunday.

The Rising Stars kicked off their maiden campaign with a heartbreaking 3-2 defeat against Morocco on Thursday. Ahead of their second fixture against Tunisia, who lost 1-0 against Nigeria in their opener, Akhulia has revealed their readiness to take on the North African nation.

“Our plan is to win the game. We have worked on mistakes that happened in the first game [against Morocco]. As a team, we did not perform badly in the first game, we only committed small mistakes that could have been avoided, and Morocco capitalised on the mistakes to punish us,” Akhulia told Pan-Africa Football.

“We have told our players to forget about the Morocco game and know we have another one coming up, and it is a game that could determine our future in this tournament. So we have to take it seriously, we are ready to get a good result.”

On whether the technical bench will makes changes to the starting XI against Tunisia, Akhulia said: “Of course, maybe one or two changes, if the team hasn’t won a game, you always look at where we went wrong or what didn’t work for us, and if it means a player should change it for us, then we can do that, and if it means we coaches need to use different tactics, then we will do that.”

Akhulia continued: “Changes may not necessarily happen to the playing unit alone, but also to our tactical approach to the game, and how we want to approach the game. I can’t really explain what plans we have for the game, but we really need to score early and defend well.

“In the other match, we committed several individual mistakes, we had a lot of individual mistakes, especially in our back line, and wasted many chances. We are urging our players to try and score those chances, and asking our defence to be more alert and specifically to try and defend well, especially when we try to move forward to try to score goals.”

As it stands, Kenya are third in the group with zero points, while Tunisia are also without a point. After one round of matches, Morocco are top of the pile with three points, Nigeria are second, also in three.