Uganda Cranes Coach Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojevic bemoaned his team’s exit from the group stages of the TotalEnergies African Nations Championship (CHAN) in Algeria.
The Cranes crashed out at the gorup stage after losing 3-1 to Cote d’Ivoire on Sunday in Algiers at the Nelson Mandela Stadium.
Uganda was group leaders before Sunday’s match and the big defeat at the hands of the Elehphants sealed their fate.
“It is difficult to accept this result, but this is what happened. We dominated the game in terms of statistics, but in terms of goals we were not efficient,” the Serbian coach said at the post-match press conference,
The coach added that the experience will be of great benefit to the team as he continues to build a winning side.
“There are useful lessons that we learned. We played a good match and our players gave everything they had. We played three tough matches and this will benefit us in the future,” said the coach
“Micho” as the coach is affectionately known also lauded his team’s resilient effort.
“We attacked well and we had several chances, but football is like this sometimes. You unfortunately cannot score at every attempt.”
The coach further praised the Côte d’Ivoire goalkeeper, Ayayi Folly for an impressive showing.
“We made some changes in order to increase the intensity of the front line, but the Ivorian goalkeeper prevented us from scoring, I consider him the man of the match because he did very well tonight”
Touching on the strength of his opponents, the coach said: “During our preparations for the match, we expected things to be difficult. The Côte d’Ivoire players have great experience and are active in well-known clubs so we expected a tough match. The good thing is that we created chances in the match, but conceding 3 goals was our downfall”, concluded the coach.
