Uganda has withdrawn from the qualifiers of the 2024 CAF Beach Soccer Africa Cup of Nations 2024 Egypt.
This followed the FUFA EXCOM meeting led by FUFA president Hon. Moses Magogo convened at FUFA Complex Mengo on Friday June 28 and decided to withdraw the team from the competition where it had already drawn against neighbours, Tanzania in a two legs qualifying tie that was scheduled for this month in a 14 teams draw conducted by the Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) last month.
Edgar Watson Suubi, CEO of the Federation of Uganda Football Association (FUFA), confirmed to media on last week that they had withdrawn in order to focus on specific competitions.
“Although we had entered the team and had been drawn in the fixture, we realized that we have so many engagements with insufficient funds and decided we concentrate well on a few,” Edgar said.
“It is unfortunate that we had to withdraw, but we shall always have another chance next time to enter a team and play in the qualifiers and make it to a CAF Beach Soccer Africa Cup of Nations,” added Suubi.
Now Tanzania have qualified without playing joining Egypt, which qualified automatically as hosts.
Currently Uganda ranked sixth in Africa and 50th in the world, according to Beach Soccer Worldwide rankings.
Ugandan Beach Soccer players who have had their league concluded just last month were hopeful to us the, form, exposure, tactics and techniques gained from competition to make it to the continent’s biggest beach soccer showpiece for the third time, after the 2021 and 2022 editions in Senegal and Mozambique, respectively.
In Senegal, Uganda’s Sand Cranes finished fourth after losing to Mozambique in the semis and Morocco in the classification match (third place play-off).
Now a total of twelve teams, including, Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Guinea, Angola, Ghana, Mauritania, the Seychelles, Mozambique, Burundi, Malawi, and Ivory Coast, will battle through the qualifiers for the six slots available.
This is not the first time FUFA pulls off in the side of Beach Soccer, in 2018, Uganda had won the bid to host the 2020 Afcon beach soccer finals and preparations had already started internally but on Tuesday, 30th June 2020, three month to the tournament, FUFA announced the fate to withdraw as one of the resolutions from the online assembly.
