Stars and Young African out of CAF competitions

Football
Jesse Kauraisa
  • 2 Hours Ago
Two of Namibia’s Premier League sides, African Stars and Young African, both bowed out of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) competitions over the weekend.

The two teams were involved in preliminary-round matches in the CAF Champions League and the CAF Confederation Cup.

African Stars lost 1–0 to Uganda’s Vipers in the second leg of the competition, in a match played on Saturday in Uganda.

The score meant that Stars exited the competition 2–0 on aggregate, having lost the first leg by the same scoreline in South Africa about a week earlier.

Team manager Andrew Tjahikika said everyone was gutted by the results, as they had hoped to qualify for the group stages for the first time.

“It is obvious that we are very disappointed with the result because our plan and vision was to make it to the group stages.

“It is unfortunate that we were not able to achieve that this time around as a team.

“The fact that we are not able to play our home matches in Namibia due to the unavailability of FIFA and CAF-approved stadiums made things very difficult for us,” Tjahikika said in an interview.



Back to the drawing board

The Debmarine Namibia Premiership champions will return home and assess the competition and the way forward.

As things stand, there is no indication of when the Premier League will start, given that there are currently no confirmed sponsors.

“We have to look at and assess the way forward as a team and hope that we can come back better next time around.

“Right now, there is no league football in the country and we do not know when it will start.

“We are, however, going to continue pushing for success and professionalism as a team,” Tjahikika said.



Learning for Young African

Young African FC, on the other hand, competed in the CAF Confederation Cup preliminaries for the first time in their history.

The Namibian team qualified for the competition after finishing second in the Debmarine Namibia Premiership last season.

Coach and owner Marley Ngarizemo said that the results were a learning curve for them.

“I want to thank everyone who supported us during this journey, even though it was not successful.

“I can say that the team has managed to learn from this experience and has gained insights for future competitions.

“As a team we will continue striving to do well wherever we play and we hope to return to this competition one day,” Ngarizemo said.