{"id":244180,"date":"2026-09-12T20:00:05","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T18:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/east-africa\/kenya\/africa-rising-stars-set-ambitious-target-for-africa-cup-of-nations-qualifiers\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T20:00:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T18:00:05","slug":"africa-rising-stars-set-ambitious-target-for-africa-cup-of-nations-qualifiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/east-africa\/kenya\/africa-rising-stars-set-ambitious-target-for-africa-cup-of-nations-qualifiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa: Rising Stars Set Ambitious Target for Africa Cup of Nations Qualifiers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"27\">NAIROBI \u2014 Buoyed by their debut at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Egypt, the national under 20 football team want another chance at the continental showpiece.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"28\">Team captain Charles Auma says their ultimate objective is to reach the finals of the Cecafa regional qualifiers, which would guarantee them a slot at the continental competition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"37\">&#8220;We have been training in the morning and evening and I can say we are fully prepared. Our objective is to go and win the trophy&#8230;nothing else, so we&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202609110547.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 East Africa <a title=\"Kenya\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/east-africa\/kenya\/\">Kenya<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NAIROBI \u2014 Buoyed by their debut at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Egypt, the national under 20 football team want another chance at the continental showpiece. Team captain Charles Auma says their ultimate objective is to reach the finals of the Cecafa regional qualifiers, which would guarantee them a slot at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":244181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[250],"tags":[258,256,24987,6674,430,4301,257,7318,6678,7106,254,9435,7594],"class_list":["post-244180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kenya","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-ambitious","tag-cup","tag-kenya-news","tag-nations","tag-news","tag-qualifiers","tag-rising","tag-set","tag-south-africa-today","tag-stars","tag-target"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}