Sandows hopes for U23 call-up
NATIONAL U20 striker Tyroane Sandows returns to Brazil this week hoping he will be back soon to represent the SA under-23 team in the Olympic qualifiers.
The U20s were knocked out of the African Youth Championship (AYC) at the weekend in Senegal and will therefore miss out on the World Cup in New Zealand.
However, quite a few of the players will graduate to the U23 team set to take part in the 2016 Rio Olympic qualifiers in a couple of months.
Sandows, who scored a hat-trick against Zambia in Amajita’s final AYC group match, dreams of playing at the Olympics next year in a country where he currently plays his football, for Gremio FC.
The 20-year-old has been in Brazil since he was 11 and played for Sao Paulo’s juniors before moving to Gremio.
“It’s a dream of mine to play in the Olympics. But first I have to go back to my team and focus and play regularly. And then hopefully I will get called up to the U23 team.
“It was a nice experience to play in the competition [AYC], but it was disappointing because the objective was to qualify for the World Cup and we didn’t.
“We have to learn from this experience and move forward. Scoring a hat-trick felt great. I hope to represent my country more going forward,” he said.
Amajita were beaten 2-0 by Ghana in their opening match and went on to lose 21 to Mali in the second match after taking a lead.
A 5-2 win against Zambia in the final group match ensured that Amajita did not end their campaign without points on the board.
“We conceded an early goal against Ghana. Because we did not expect that, we really did not know what to do. And it didn’t help that they scored their second goal just before half time,” Sandows said.
“We tried to pick ourselves up against Mali. We scored first, but we lost concentration and we conceded two goals.”