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The Cranes tactician made the change as the Wakiso Giants midfielder got injured just after he was included in the 30-man provisional squad
Uganda head coach Johnathan McKinstry has revealed why he settled on Ivan Sserubiri as a replacement for the injured Kirizestom Ntambi.
McKinstry was forced to make a change in his squad preparing to host the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup after Ntambi pulled out injured.
Uganda Cranes resumed training on Monday with the URA FC midfielder joining his teammates for the first time.
“I think it’s fair to say he is the replacement for [Kirizestom] Ntambi when you look at the physical attributes,” McKinstry told Kawowo Sports.
“Though Ntambi can play a lot more going forward and is more of a technician but in Ethiopia, we played him in front of the back four and he did well.
“He [Sserubiri] is young and this is the first time he has been involved as far as I know and he did okay today and like I said a lot of teaching will come in open play and will be a test for him. There are no number sixes in the league that have the same physicality and style that he has.”
McKinstry also explained the need to have players with diverse capabilities because they will help the national team to adapt and approach different opponents perfectly.
“For football, it’s not necessarily having the best twenty players in the UPL. It’s about having players who can play together well and answer to different questions,” the coach added.
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“Sometimes we play games where we need highly creative midfielders and in other games, we may need to defend a lot more and we need a lot of physicalities and positional discipline and Ivan [Sserubiri] is a player we think can give us some of those attributes.”
The Cranes are in Group A which also consists of Burundi, Ethiopia and Eritrea. The regional tournament will start on December 7 to 19 when the countries will battle to wrestle the title from Harambee Stars.
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