By Mark Namanya
Email: pro@afconpamoja.ug
In most people’s eyes, Uganda vs Libya was an 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier that so happened to be the first international match played at the brand new Hoima City Stadium.
It was also deemed to be a simulation match to test the readiness of the facility ahead of next year when it will be one of the stadiums that will be used for the first ever AFCON tournament in East Africa.
In most people’s eyes, Uganda vs Libya was an 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier that so happened to be the first international match played at the brand new Hoima City Stadium.
But, as with many events of this magnitude, football more often than not becomes a side-show. It is nominally the main event but along the way becomes engulfed into the subordinate affair.
That was the case before and after Uganda Cranes took on Libya on Tuesday evening. In the wee hours of Tuesday, taxis, coasters and buses of fans were streaming into the city to join revellers who were patronizing popular hang-out spots like Cafe Milano, KATS Lounge and Arrows Bar.
It was very apparent that this was not a normal day. Rather, it was an extraordinary week for the sons and daughters of Bunyoro region. National team jerseys could be seen literally everywhere.
Accommodation meanwhile was at a premium. The invasion of fans was such that no room was left unoccupied. It didn’t matter lodging was low or high end; all hotels and guest houses were full.
It meant that some fans slept in their vehicles while others partied until sunrise because they couldn’t get where to rest their heads.
The traffic in the dead of the night was not to dissimilar to what you would experience on the Wandegeya lights during the school rush hours. Hoima witnessed something unusual. Business was brisk.
Boda Bodas will be wishing that Cranes games are played at Hoima City Stadium every week. They ferried fans at rates slightly higher than usual. But the fans were more than happy to pay for their service.
As for the restaurants, it was Christmas-come-early. Some outlets sold meals until they ran the kitchen dry and cooked again. There had been pre-match apathy because most of the locals struggled to adapt to the idea of purchasing match tickets online.
But Ugandans are typically last minute people. They tend to act very late. Fans in Hoima and other parts of the country bought most of the tickets in the hours leading to the game despite sales having been announced weeks earlier.
There were fans willing to pay for VIP tickets on the final day for even triple the price. Except that the tickets had already been sold out. And no one going to give away the historic ticket of Uganda’s first match at Hoima City Stadium.
The perfomance itself from the team was mixed. The team showed flashes of cohesion in the opening half and were rewarded by Arnold Vula’s magnificent header off a beautiful Allan Okello delivery. Nathan Asiimwe’s lung-bursting runs and deliveries caused Libya all sorts of problems and endeared him to fans who were watching him for the first time.
But the second half was a horror show. Cranes struggled to lay an arm on the North Africans after resumption of play and Ezzeddin Elmaremi will forever be haunted by the inexplicable miss of the century when he somehow missed a sitter with a gaping goal at his mercy. It will go down as one of the worst misses of all time.
Libya bossed the latter stages of the game and were the side dictating terms up until the final whistle. While the qualifiers are meant to help prepare Uganda for AFCON 2027, coach Paul Put will be aware that clinical sides like Algeria and Morocco would have punished Cranes’ lethargic showing.
The win was a great scoreline nonetheless and ensured that the thousands of fans who watched Uganda play at the stadium for the first time left the ground with happy memories.
It meant that the fan-fest organised by Cranes sponsors Nile Special inside the stadium perimeter was never going to disappoint. The performance by Ykee Benda was among the highlights of jubilant fans whose night was just getting started at 11pm, a time when normally most souls would be switching off the lights.
Sport subjects humanity to all types of emotions. Between the 60th and 95th minute, the stadium was edgy and tense. Libya were on the prowl, playing passes through the channels and operating deep in the Ugandan half. It was sometimes painful to watch, seeing the home team hanging on.
But when the full time whistle came, the pain turned into a glorious, memorable experience. With Uganda top of Group H after four points from two games, there is a feeling that Paul is Putting, pun fully intended, together something decent.
Nine naturalised Ugandans have strengthened the core of the team and with four of them featuring against Libya and one of them – Vula – getting the long goal, the pieces could well be coming together for the Belgian.
For Hoima, the week was a glimpse into what the period of June 19-July 17 2027 will look like. Accommodation will be a business opportunity for the locals. Beyond the hotels, lodges and inns, locals will do well to enlist their homes on AirBnB.
Most of the centralised planning has centered around places of abode for the teams, CAF officials and media hotels. But for the local resident in and around Hoima municipality and the neighbouring towns, the Uganda-Libya match showed that there will be obvious demand for accommodation from the hordes of fans of football tourists.
There were evident road works on the Kampala-Hoima road and inside the city. By the time AFCON comes calling, the presumption is that the contractors will have finished the road infrastructure that will be central for the easy mobility of the cumulative number of hundreds of thousands of fans who will play that route mid next year.
Hoima had a sip of AFCON this week. The full enjoyment is loading in the ensuing nine months.z
