This year’s Cecafa Challenge Cup was one of the most challenging regional tournaments held in recent years, according to the body’s Secretary General Nicholas Musonye.In an exclusive interview, Musonye told The Times Sport, “This year’s tournament has been very difficult, very many factors militated against it. The weather was very bad, attendance was very low and the general organisation was not very good.”“I think we started the arrangement of this tournament on a slow note and we didn’t put many things in place at the right time, so, generally, it was one of the most difficult tournaments in recent years,” said Musonye.Despite the challenges, Musonye said the quality of football was very high. “We are satisfied with the way the tournament has gone and in football there is no way you can avoid challenges, it is always very difficult to be on top of everything,”Request from future hosts“Whoever is going to host the next edition should first give us specifics about the local sponsorship. We want the next host country to tell us how they are going to raise money from local sponsors and obtain government’s endorsement before we (general assembly) decide the host next year in March,”He noted, “We want Cecafa to grow, we don’t want to stifle Cecafa, we want more competitions with excellent organisation and high quality of football.” Afcon & World Cup failures“Our teams are not serious, you find some countries bringing their second choice teams here and their first choice teams are idly out there doing nothing. This is how useless we are.”“Instead of bringing their best teams to come and compete, they bring their second teams in a sponsored tournament. They are killing the spirit of the competition.” Cecafa had a commitment from Tusker to take one of the regional teams to the 2014 World Cup finals. “The commitment still stands and we have Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Sudan all still in the race to go to the world Cup and we will ensure that we get that target right,” explained the long-serving Cecafa SG.Defending champions Uganda Cranes retained the Cecafa Tusker Cup for the third year running after edging out archrivals Kenya 2-1 in the final played at Namboole Stadium on Saturday.The victory is Uganda’s 13th Cecafa title and a fourth crown under Bobby Williamson’s stewardship as the Cranes underlined their dominance in the region. They went through this year’s tourney without losing a match and conceding only once.
