By OUR CORRESPONDENT
Junior Starlets coach Mildred Cheche expects the team to be in camp by January 25th to prepare for the upcoming Fifa Women’s U17 World Cup qualifier against Uganda.
The two-legged qualifiers will be played in March. Uganda qualified for the second round after walloping 18-1 in the first-round qualifiers played in Uganda. Kenya was given a bye to the second round.
Cheche said: “We expected to be in camp to prepare for the qualifier by the 20th but it was not possible. However, we want to be in camp by the 25th.”
She admitted that the qualifier against rivals Uganda will be tough, but she hopes Kenya will make its second World Cup appearance in Morocco. Morocco will host the championships from 2025 to 2029.
“We are putting together a great team to compete at that level. We expect to qualify for the World Cup. Uganda is an experienced team and the qualifier will not be easy. We have a good team which we will push to give us good results,” added Cheche.
Cheche, who guided Kenya to their first-ever Fifa U17 Women’s World Cup appearance in the Dominican Republic last year, hailed the CAF U-17 Girls Integrated Football Tournament, which concluded in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, over the weekend.
“The GIFT tournament gave us a platform to prepare our team ahead of the qualifiers. Even though the two teams from Kenya did not win the tournament, they played really well finishing third and fifth,” she said.
Kenya was represented by the Kenya Academy of Sports (KAS) and the Kenya Elite Junior Academy (KEJA).
KAS under coach Jackline Juma finished third, and KEJA, coached by Cheche, came fifth during the inaugural tournament.
She said most of the players who represented Kenya at the tournament will join the U17 team for the qualifiers. “We shall have a mini selection to incorporate players who were not in Tanzania. All of them were not in Tanzania,” said the tactician.
According to CAF, the second round of qualifiers which will have been narrowed down to 16 nations will take place between 07 – 09 March ahead of the return fixtures set to take place between 14 – 16 March 2025.
The qualifiers conclude in April 2025 when the third and final rounds take place for the eight remaining nations.
The third round first legs will take place between 18 – 20 April, with the final round of qualifiers to determine the qualified nations to be decided between 25 – 27 April 2025.
Four teams will qualify from the qualifiers for the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup 2025 in Morocco as representatives from Africa alongside Morocco being the hosts.
