"We dropped our standards" - Benni McCarthy's assistant reflects on Harambee Stars' defeat to Gambia
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Reading Time: 3min | Sun. 07.09.25. | 21:09
The 52-year-old admits there were costly individual mistakes, but is expectant of a turnaround in application on Tuesday
Harambee Stars assistant coach Vasili Manousakis says much of Kenya’s display in the first half of its game against The Gambia on Friday, 5 September was below the required standards, but is adamant that his team will do better going forward.
Manousakis, making a rare appearance in front of the cameras in place of the much maligned Benni McCarthy, decried the number of individual mistakes Harambee Stars committed in their 3-1 defeat to The Scorpions at Kasarani Stadium.
He labelled them as areas the team fell short in, but also thought there were positives to pick from the performance that effectively ended their 2026 FIFA World Cup hopes.
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Commenting on what was learnt through a period of post-match analysis, the 52-year-old said: “Much is about the things we did right, and areas that we fell short in.
There were so many football moments in the first half that were not up to our standards. Overall, when you watch the match back, there were so many things that we did incredibly well - we started at a very high tempo, and we felt we had Gambia on the backfoot.
But I think at this level, when you start to make individual mistakes, and against the run of play, it really drops the morale.”
Having carved out decent opportunities in the first 10 minutes, things started to unravel for Harambee Stars as they conceded thrice in the next 26 minutes, with all goals coming from their turnovers in possession.
In the 10th minute, Rooney Onyango tried to dribble out of danger to no avail, and it was from his giveaway that Gambia forced a corner that ultimately gave birth to their opener.
14 minutes later, Sylvester Owino was guilty of misplacing an ambitious pass from near the halfway line, which after three touches led to Yankuba Minteh’s easy finish past Bryne Omondi.
With minutes left to the break, midfielder Timothy Ouma added further damage by playing a weak pass straight to the opposition, and all it took was seven seconds for the opposition to turn it to a goal.
“We have had to look critically look at those moments and said we can do better,” Manousakis added.
In spite of that, Manousakis said Harambee Stars creating chances, some of which they scored from but were disallowed, presented the brighter side of their performance.
He hopes some of those tendencies can be carried over in their next games, starting with a tie against Seychelles on Tuesday, 9 September.
“The way we started, we now really want to complete the first half at that tempo,” the South African tactician said.
“We want to play on the front foot. We cannot worry about Seychelles or be too focused on what they are doing. We have to concentrate on ourselves, fix our errors, play on the front foot, and start really well.”
Asked how the players were dealing with the fresh setback, he said: “We have one sort of an inside rule that says whether it is success or disappointment after a result, we either celebrate or suffer for 24 hours only, and once after that is behind us, we have to move on to the next game.
"The 24 hours are done. That is it, we got over it. We cannot change what happened in the past, but we can certainly fix what is happening forward.”
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