Kenya Premier League side Bandari FC made history after qualifying to the group stages of the CAF Confederations Cup. It will be the first time the team will feature in the group stages of the continental competition.
Having won the first leg 2-0 at home against Tunisia’s Ben Guerdane, Bandari were given a major scare when they went 2-0 down in the first 30 minutes of the second leg encounter. However, a dramatic second half saw Micheal Wanyika save a penalty while William Wadri scored a late away goal to ease the pressure and send Bandari through.
After the match, an ecstatic Bandari FC head coach Bernard Mwalala could barely hold back his excitement.
”At the moment all we want to do is celebrate this win as it is historic. We want to thanks all the fans, management and most importantly the players because everyone reall did their bit achieving this feat,” Mwalala said.
On the match itself, the former Nzoia Sugar coach pointed out that his team should have buried the game in the first half and warned them that they will need to be better in the upcoming continental fixtures.
”Our first half was really poor and we probably were lucky to be only 2 goals down. We however still had chances and Wadri should have scored the one on one he had with their goalkeeper. It’s a valuable lesson for us on how to tackle our next fixtures but in the ned, we are just happy to go through,” he concluded.
Bandari will be joined by Gor Mahia who were relegated from the CAF Champions League after going down 6-1 on aggregate to Algerian side USM Alger.