Head Coach Vincent Mashami remains adamant he saw enough positives in his side’s goalless draw with Uganda last night, to suggest that Amavubi will go into the next two games with confidence.
Amavubi were denied twice by the goalpost as Hakizimana Muhajdiri and Tuyisenge Jacques missed glorious chances against rivals Uganda in their opening African Nations Championships (CHAN) Group C game at Stade de La Reunification in Douala, Cameroun.
Despite the results, Mashami said he was content with the performance.
He said “First of all congratulations to both teams. We played a good, spectacular game. We tried to play our game and perform well but we couldn’t score goals.”
He continued “Sometimes we were unlucky on some occasions, if you look at two or three goalscoring opportunities we had, hitting the crossbar twice, we could have killed the game with those chances but we did not capitalize on them.”
“At the same time we knew it would not be easy because Uganda is not an easy team to break, they have experienced players and had a good pre-tournament competition which helped them to prepare for these games.”
“To be honest, we did not but at least we can be happy we did not lose the game. You lose a lot when you lose the opening game.”
After this frustrating draw, Mashami says Amavubi are looking forward to making amends in their next games.
“There are still positives to take from the performance. And we now need to build on them and do better in our next games,” he said.
With only the best two going through to the knockouts, Rwanda will need to raise their performance in their next Group C fixtures against reigning champions Morocco on Friday, and Togo on Tuesday, for a chance to progress to the quarterfinals for the second time in the history of the competition.
