Baxter and Bafana ask us to put hope before experience
It feels like déjà vu doesn’t it? Bafana Bafana coach Stuart Baxter and his players are pleading with us to forget about the heartbreaks of the past and believe that SA can qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
They are asking us to once again lay ourselves bare and trust that they will beat Senegal at the Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane on Friday night and repeat the trick away from home in Dakar next Tuesday.
They are asking us to have faith that they have can raise their game to dizzier heights than the cynics imagine and succeed where a succession of Bafana teams have come up short in the past.
But you can’t blame those fellow citizens who are reluctant to reinvest their emotions, given our at times abusive relationship with the national team.
It seems as if it was only yesterday when former Bafana Bafana coach Gordon Igesund also asked the nation’s soccer lovers to have faith — four years ago, when qualification for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil was hanging by the thinnest of threads.
Granted, Bafana’s fate was out of their hands — they were relying on Ethiopia failing to win a Group A qualifying match against the Central African Republic that was being played in Brazzaville.
Bafana also had to keep their end of the bargain and beat Botswana in Durban to complete the feat.
While Bafana managed to beat Botswana 4-1 in Durban, the result was not enough to progress to the final World Cup qualifying round after Ethiopia’s 2-1 victory in Brazzaville rendered the win a stirring consolation prize.
The gaping wounds took a very long time to heal after that disappointment, but this is the only national soccer team we have and here we are again.
Bafana are in a little better position this time and they will qualify for the 2018 World Cup if they beat Senegal in Polokwane and Dakar.
But that’s easier said than done because these Senegalese — who are the group leaders and need only two points from the two games to qualify — are very tough opponents.
They have some of the biggest names in world football on their team sheet, but luckily for Bafana, the West Africans have seldom lived up to their potential.
And lest we forget, Bafana actually beat them in 2016 under former coach Shakes Mashaba in a game that has since been tainted.
SA won the match 2-1 in November, but a Fifa probe triggered by betting patterns led to Ghanaian referee Joseph Lamptey being found guilty of match manipulation.
Lamptey awarded SA a firsthalf penalty for a nonexistent handball, which they converted.
Later in the same half, Lamptey was ordering the Senegalese to retreat for a free kick, when SA took it and scored almost immediately.
Fifa barred Lamptey for life and international sports judicial body the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected his appeal.
The question is, can Bafana do it again and beat their more fancied opponents home and away? Baxter and his players believe they can.
“If they [the doubters] are South African‚ I would say get a grip on yourself for goodness sake,” Baxter said this week.
“I’d say we have one game‚ 90 minutes, and we want everybody behind us.
“We will try everything in our power to try to win that game and take Senegal right to the wire. We will try to do that and that’s 90 minutes.”
So there you have it folks, your country needs you and you are required to dig deep and lay it all on the line again.
This is what country duty means and you have to believe, even if it means getting clobbered again.