SA legend hopes Broos has plan B for strikers
The strikers are an area of concern for Bafana Bafana at the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Ivory Coast, where they will open their group E account against Mali at Amadou Gon Coulibaly Stadium in Korhogo on Tuesday.
The concern was shared by Mark Williams, Bafana’s twogoal hero in the 1996 Afcon final in which SA beat Tunisia 2-0 at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg to win the trophy for the first and only time in what was Bafana’s inaugural appearance.
Speaking at Bafana’s send-off at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on Thursday, Williams said he wonders where Bafana’s goal will come from in Hugo Broos’s squad that will be minus Lebo Mothiba and Lyle Foster.
Broos has Orlando Pirates pair Evidence Makgopa and Zakhele Lepasa, and Mihlali Mayambela, Percy Tau, Thapelo Maseko and Oswin Appollis as players he will look to get goals when they take on Mali on Tuesday, Namibia on January 21 and Tunisia on January 24.
Williams, who finished with four Afcon goals in Clive Barker’s 1996 cup-winning team, is hoping Broos’s team will be able to produce enough goals to progress to the second round.
“We’ve always been lacking in scoring goals and that’s a big part in tournaments. When you play, you need to have a guy who’s going to score goals on a regular basis, and if we can get that department right Bafana will be a threat to every team they play,” said Williams, who had Philemon Masinga and Shaun Bartlett among the strikers he was competing with for the jersey in the 1996 squad.
GOING BACKWARDS
Williams added that the problem of scoring goals does not start at Bafana but he has seen it in the Premier Soccer League (PSL), where strikers are failing to finish a season with double figures.
“It happens in the PSL as well. You can’t have a top scorer with seven goals. It’s an embarrassment. It [lack of goals] has been going backwards and you can see that 95% of coaches in every game say ‘we played great football’ but coming to the last third they’re not scoring.
“Why are we [former players] here? I’ve put myself up there and I’ve done it with SuperSport [United] as a striker’s coach. Scoring goals is something you’re born with, but you need to give it over to other players and it helps the team.”
Williams said that having a striker such as Foster would have helped Bafana at Afcon because he would have offered Broos’s team a different dimension in how they attack their opponents.
While Mothiba will miss the finals because of injury, Foster has been battling with mental health. Though he has been back playing for his Premier League outfit Burnley in recent weeks, he and his club coach Vincent Kompany said he was not ready to be with Bafana at Afcon.
“He [Foster] is a guy on form and that is a big miss because you need strikers that can score goals and are confident. Even when they [Bafana] were playing [a training match against Lesotho on Wednesday] they couldn’t find the back of the net and that is not a good thing.
“Sometimes you need a target man, and he could have been that. I hope the coach has a plan B because if we got all the players running away it becomes difficult because you get the ball and you’re looking for a striker and he’s running off. You need one to sit back and that’s not what we have.”