Kenya plays on Monday against Senegal in a kind of endgame to the eighth-finals of the Africa Cup. The Nation’s hopes on Victor Wanyama, the model of a whole Generation.
Victor Wanyama entered on Thursday evening as one of the last of the Mixed Zone of the stadium, “30. June” from Cairo. There, where the players have to make after the games are always the questions of the journalists, breathed the Kenyan captain only once. With 3:2 Kenya had just won the second preliminary round game against neighbours Tanzania, in the process, twice coming from behind to catch up. It was a feat of strength.
“I’m so proud of our Team. We have shown fight and morale and proved that we are a good team, if we all pull on the same rope,” said Wanyama. Kenya has three points from two Games, in a sense, a final the first knockout round in front of On Monday it goes against the point of the same Senegal. “We are of course the clear outsiders. But if we fight again, you have to beat us first,” says Wanyama.
Hope for a whole Generation
Wanyama, the last week of his 28. Birthday celebrated, is something of an icon in the Kenyan football. Not only is he the best player and captain of the national team. He is also a carrier of hope for a whole Generation of football Kids in the East African country. His story shows what is possible when one pursues a goal only persistent enough.
Kenya Fans hope for Wanyama
Wanyama has been in simple conditions. He grew up in Mawe, a railroad-district of Nairobi, where his mother had a job. With the school there was such a thing, Victor, who has ten brothers and sisters, played the better football. On the dust he kicked always barefoot until your feet bled. As he got sometime of his first Pair of football boots, could not manage, he initially even so. “We had to persuade him to get used to it,” said his father Noah in the Kenyan newspaper “Daily Nation”.
Two Champions League finalists from a family
Noah Wanyama was once in Kenya, football players and can truly be proud of its offspring. In addition to Victor, the lost 2019 with Tottenham Hotspur in the final of the Champions League against Liverpool, it brought another of his sons, all the way up to this level: Macdonald Mariga, four years older brother, Victor, was in the Team of Inter Milan, the 2010 star trainer José Mourinho Champions League winner.
Wanyama (left) in the preliminary round game against Algeria, the Kenyans 0:2 lost
With 15 national players
“Victor is the better strategist on the football field,” says Noah Wanyama on his son, who was already with 15 national players. Then, in 2007, he was deployed in a test game against Nigeria, since then, he is from the Team of the “Harambee Stars”, as the national team is called, have become indispensable. He is a thinker and Arm in the defensive midfield, since 2013, he is the captain of the team.
However, football Kenya has technically even in Africa, a developing country, greater success were never there. You made it so far to a total of six took part in the Africa Cup, never, however, a Kenyan Team survived the first round.
In three years at Tottenham Hotspur
For Wanyama was clear, therefore, that he had to leave his home country as quickly as possible if he wanted to start an international career. And so he ended up on stations in Sweden and Belgium, with 20 years at Celtic, before he was in 2013, in the Jersey of FC Southampton first Kenyan in the English Premier League.
Friendship to knockout must rest
Since 2016, he plays for Tottenham, as the world star he earned millions. However, the qualification for the Africa Cup of Nations was to him a matter of the heart: “it was always my dream. Here, I’ve always wanted to go,” says Wanyama. Now he is there and needs to win the next Parte against the Stars from the Senegal to make sure to go to the next round. For Wanyama this game is also another reason why a special: He will meet his best buddy, Sadio Mané. Between 2014 and 2016, both played together at Southampton. “That’s when we became thick friends,” says Wanyama. “But our friendship must now rest for 90 minutes.”