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Stars coach to access squad fitness


Harambee Stars coach Bobby Williamson says he will use the next few days to assess the fitness of the foreign based players in camp.

The trainer has handed call ups to eight professionals, Victor Wanyama (England) Arnold Origi (Norway), David ‘Calabar’ Owino (Zambia) David ‘Cheche’ Ochieng’ (Saudi Arabia), Francis Kahata (Albania), Paul Were (South Africa), Anthony Akumu and Allan Wanga (both Sudan) ahead of the opening 2017 Africa Nations Cup qualifying clash away to Congo Brazzaville on June 12.

The team is set to commence training on Wednesday afternoon, and Williamson says “past experience” will be key in determining which players among this lot is in the best condition for the assignment.

FITNESS TESTS

“I have had very little opportunities to monitor the foreign based players performances other than through the internet. I therefore have no option but to run some fitness tests so as to select who will be most helpful in Congo,” Williamson said.

“The other time we called up Anthony Mbugua (Hapoel Jerusalem – Isreal) and Luis Misiko (Nice, France) for national assignments and they arrived unfit. We still had to go with them to Botswana because we had already spent so much in bringing them to Nairobi. I gave one of them a chance and he got injured within 30 minutes,” the coach added.

In the meantime, the team is slated to play a series of friendly matches at the Rwanda Peace Cup in Kigali to fine tune for the clash against Congo who reached the quarter-finals at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea.