Denis Omedi’s goal arrived too late to alter the result, but it landed with a significance that stretched far beyond the scoreline.
When the striker stepped off the bench to score Uganda’s consolation in a 3–1 defeat to Tunisia at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations, he etched his name into a story rarely told at continental tournaments.
At 31, Omedi was not only making his AFCON debut, he was doing so after a career shaped as much by service as by sport.
For years, football existed around the edges of his working life. As recently as 2019, Omedi was juggling training sessions with a nursing diploma and shifts as a prison warder in northern Uganda.
Denis Omedi was a part-timer footballer and persuing a diploma in nursing back in 2019 and then became a prison warder.
Six years later, aged 31, he scored on his AFCON debut for @UgandaCranes 🇺🇬👏#TotalEnergiesAFCON2025 pic.twitter.com/jNQ834MwUe
— Lorenz Köhler (@Lorenz_KO) December 23, 2025
Matchdays often meant scrambling for transport, boarding taxis or boda-bodas when no team bus was available. The game was a passion pursued alongside responsibility, not a profession that dictated his schedule.
That reality makes his late bloom all the more remarkable. Omedi did not reach Uganda’s top flight until 2023, when Kitara FC took a chance on him after seasons spent in the lower divisions.
He repaid the faith immediately, scoring 15 league goals in his first full season, finishing second in the scoring charts and driving Kitara into the title race. Although the league slipped away, the club lifted the Uganda Cup, opening the door to continental football.
Exposure followed, and so did recognition. In the CAF Confederation Cup, Omedi struck twice over two legs against Al Hilal Benghazi. Domestically, a daring rabona finish against KCCA FC in the FUFA Super Eight captured global attention, earning a nomination for the FIFA Puskás Award and placing Ugandan football briefly in the international spotlight.
“I feel the goal represents more than me,” Omedi said in an interview with FIFA.
“It came from Uganda. It was made in Uganda. I feel like my country entered the history books of FIFA.”
His influence carried into the national team. A crucial goal away to South Africa helped Uganda end a six-year AFCON absence, and his steady return in red reflected his growing importance.
Off the pitch, recognition followed when he was voted Uganda’s Best Male Footballer of the Year in 2024, an honour that came with a saloon car and symbolised how far he had travelled from the uncertainties of public transport.
A move to Rwandan giants APR FC in January 2025 brought silverware, with a league title secured within months.
Yet it was his AFCON debut goal, struck on Africa’s grandest stage, that distilled the essence of his journey. Omedi’s path has not been linear, polished or hurried.
It has wound through lecture halls, prison corridors and modest pitches, shaped by patience and persistence. His story is a reminder that African football still has space for the unexpected, and that sometimes the longest roads lead to the brightest lights.
