Bonface Ambani has been credited with launching the professional football careers of both Lewis Bandi and Austine Odhiambo, who are now shining for Harambee Stars at CHAN 2024.

AFC Leopards chairman Bonface Ambani has lifted the lid on how he unearthed two of Kenya’s brightest stars at the 2024 African Nations Championship (CHAN) — Austine Odhiambo and Lewis Bandi — during his days coaching the club’s youth side, the Cubs.

The pair have been standout performers in the tournament, which Kenya is co-hosting alongside Tanzania and Uganda. 

Odhiambo has already scored twice, while Bandi shone on his first appearance against Morocco, excelling at right-back with his ability to drift into midfield to create overloads, while remaining defensively solid.

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Harambee Stars coach Benni McCarthy has shared why he feels it is still too early to cast aside foreign-based players for CHAN 2024 heroes.

But their rise might never have happened had Ambani not spotted their potential early and taken a chance on them.

“I was coaching the Cubs at the time and had organised trials in South B,” Ambani recalled. “Many young men turned up. Having been on the international stage, it doesn’t take me long to spot a player — sometimes just a second.

“Austine came in with a few others. I asked his name, he said ‘Austin’. I asked his position — ‘striker’. I told him to get in. Only one touch was enough — the way he controlled the ball and turned… I called him straight back.

“He was shocked, even a little upset, because he’d barely been on the pitch. But I’d already seen what I needed to. I told the team manager, ‘After this, I need his birth certificate and his papers.’ That’s how I drafted him into the team.”

Siraj Mohammed has credited Benni McCarthy’s tactics for helping 10-man Harambee Stars stay composed in their matches against Angola and Morocco.

Raised in Baba Dogo’s Lucky Summer Estate, just a stone’s throw from Kasarani Stadium, Odhiambo had once been caught up in criminal activities. Ambani admits part of his role was steering him away from that life. “It’s been a long journey for him. He’s had his challenges, but I had to find a way to help him mend that side of his story.”

Ambani, who has also built Mara Sugar from a Division Three outfit to an FKF Premier League club and guided Nakuru Bucks into National Super League contention, says Bandi’s size never put him off.

“I remember being at City Stadium, watching the small boys play. Lewis was hardly 15 years old, a very small boy physically, but I saw the qualities he possessed,” he said.

“I told the team manager, ‘I need this boy.’ I walked down to the field and told him, ‘Tomorrow you start training with my junior team.’ I wasn’t looking at his size — I was looking at his mind, his football brain. I knew then he would go far. I moved him to the juniors, and I believe I had one of the best junior teams in the country at that time.”

Bandi went on to make the senior AFC Leopards squad, a side he spent nearly eight years with, even captaining them last season, and has now opted to cross rivals to Gor Mahia.

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