In 2004 Kenya was really another nation: only two years before its people had been able to freely elect the President of the Republic and the Members of Parliament, the growing economy brought to light many problems to be solved, including high infant mortality and the incidence of malaria.
A country that began the process of modernization and hypercivilization, with the construction of roads and the expansion of Nairobi, and at the same time maintained a very high quality of life for the wealthy classes and tourists. Golden years, from this point of view, and of wide international consideration, up to the well-known political events of 2008.
At that time, the last participation of the Harambee Stars, Kenya's national football team, in the African championships dates back to that time.
This year, fifteen years later, Kenya returns to participate in the final phase of the continental tournament, which kicks off today in Egypt.
If then the phenomenon was a surprising eighteen-year-old striker, Dennis Oliech (who after shooting France and the United Arab Emirates, at the age of 33 returned to his homeland and still plays, but not in the national team), today the celebrated champions are called Victor Wanyama, captain and vice-champion of Europe with Tottenham Hotspurs and Michael Olunga, centre forward who played in Scandinavia and Spain before landing in Japan, where he is asserting himself to the tune of goals. A national team also made up of promising young players, such as the Eric Johanna wing, which perhaps has its weak point in the goalkeeper Oluoch.
The coach is the French Sebastien Migne, forty-six years old expert in African football who before landing in Nairobi has trained the Congolese national team. He is to be credited with having led a national team to the shadow of the pyramids that participated only six times in the final stages, in 1972 and three times in the nineties, before 2004 and this year. The icing on the cake was his home victory against the highly-quoted Ghana last year.
The chances of passing the round, we must say, are still small: the Harambee Stars will have to deal with the Senegal of the "Neapolitan" Koulibaly and Algeria, with the suggestive derby against the "cousins" of Tanzania. At least that victory is expected, but someone dreams of the miracle of qualifying for the quarter-finals.