Two friendlies against Lesotho will not decide whether Kenya’s Harambee Stars are ready to host a continental tournament. But for Benni McCarthy and the players assembled in Pretoria this month, they were the closest thing available to a dress rehearsal, and what they revealed says as much about Harambee Stars’ direction as any scoreline could.
The numbers themselves were modest. A 1-1 draw on June 4 gave way to a 4-0 win three days later, against a side ranked some 30 places below Kenya.
McCarthy was characteristically unimpressed by the gap between the two results, telling reporters after the first leg that his side had let slip a string of chances it should have taken.
That mix of progress and self-criticism has become something of a signature for the South African tactician since he took over the national team, and it is, in its own way, the story.
What makes this window different from the routine churn of friendlies Kenya has played for years is the company the Harambee Stars now keep on paper. As co-hosts of AFCON 2027 alongside Tanzania and Uganda, Kenya has already secured its place at the tournament regardless of results.
Yet McCarthy’s side is still competing in qualifying, drawn into a group alongside South Africa, Guinea and Ethiopia, three teams with considerably more continental pedigree than Lesotho.
The logic is straightforward: a guaranteed seat at the table is worth little if the team arrives there without having tested itself against the calibre of opposition it will actually face.
The Lesotho fixtures, in that sense, were less an end in themselves than an audition, both for McCarthy’s evolving system and for a new generation of players hoping to be part of it.
New faces in Pretoria
That generation was on full display in Pretoria. Five players were handed their senior international debuts during the window: Wealdstone duo Deon Woodman and Micah Obiero, Stoke City’s Sydney Agina, ADO Den Haag goalkeeper Caleb Kramer, and Hull City winger Sammy Hena-Kamau.
For McCarthy, the inclusion of lower-league and academy-level diaspora talent is not incidental; it reflects a wider recruitment strategy that has seen the technical bench cast its net well beyond the usual pool of established Kenya Premier League and well-known European-based names.
Whether that strategy produces players capable of contributing in a qualifying campaign against the continent’s heavyweights, rather than simply padding out a squad list, is the question McCarthy’s side now has roughly three months to begin answering before qualifiers resume in September.
This widening of the net sits alongside a domestic football economy that is itself showing modest signs of life.
Gor Mahia’s ticket revenues from the 2025/26 season were reported to run into the tens of millions of shillings, a reminder that the national team’s fortunes do not exist in isolation from the health of the league that still produces the bulk of its core.
If McCarthy’s diaspora-heavy approach pays off on the pitch, the harder question for the federation will be whether that momentum can be channelled back into the domestic game, rather than simply becoming another reason for talented young Kenyans to look abroad first.
The Home Advantage Question
There is also a less tangible factor at play, one that assistant coach Vasili Masounakis has been keen to talk up: the atmosphere Kenyan fans are expected to generate when the tournament arrives on home soil.
Drawing comparisons to the raucous backing the team received during the 2024 African Nations Championship, co-hosted by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, where Harambee Stars exited at the quarter-final stage on penalties, Masounakis has framed home advantage as something close to a tactical asset.
It is an understandable pitch, and not an unreasonable one; crowd support has tangible effects on performance, and Kenyan venues are rarely short of noise.
But it is also worth treating with some caution. CHAN 2024 showed that passionate support alone does not close a quality gap when it matters, and AFCON 2027 will arrive with considerably higher stakes and sharper opposition than a regional tournament did.
What McCarthy’s project ultimately amounts to, eighteen months out from kickoff, is an attempt to convert a guaranteed tournament slot into a genuinely competitive one.
The debutants from Pretoria may not all make the final squad. The qualifying results against South Africa and Guinea may not flatter Kenya’s ranking.
But the broader test, whether this team can arrive at its own tournament able to compete rather than simply participate, is the one that will define how this period of Harambee Stars history is remembered.
September’s qualifiers will offer the first real evidence either way.
