Benni McCarthy defends his loyal soldiers

Speaking on his approach to picking Kenya's squad, McCarthy leaned into a word you don't hear much from modern international coaches: loyalty. According to Capital Sports, the Harambee Stars boss defended leaving out players currently in strong club form in favour of what he called trusted figures, the ones he knows will do a job for the national team even when the underlying numbers don't scream selection.

It's an old-school football argument dressed up for 2026: form is a snapshot, trust is a track record. McCarthy's case is that a squad built around players who understand his structure and buy into it will hold together better under pressure than one reshuffled every camp to chase whoever's hot.

The case for sticking with soldiers

Coaches who favour continuity tend to point at the same thing: chemistry doesn't build itself in a two-day camp before a qualifier. McCarthy's framing, that certain players are effectively soldiers who've earned their spot through consistency and buy-in rather than a hot streak, is a version of an argument Carlo Ancelotti and Didier Deschamps have both made at various points about squad culture mattering as much as raw output.

For Harambee Stars specifically, that stability matters. International squads assemble rarely, players scatter across leagues with wildly different standards, and a coach who keeps recalling the same core group is betting that familiarity closes gaps that talent alone can't.

The risk on the other side

The obvious counter is the one every meritocracy argument makes: if a player is genuinely outperforming the incumbent at club level, leaving him out costs the team points now and costs the player development time he can't get back. East African football doesn't have the depth to waste in-form talent on the bench for the sake of sentiment, and if Harambee Stars stumble in matches where the loyal-soldiers approach was picked over form, that tension will only get louder.

McCarthy hasn't disguised which side of that argument he's on. The question for Kenyan football now is whether results back him up, because a loyalty-first policy only survives as long as the loyal players keep delivering.