Mashaba punches the Bible
COACH UNSHAKEN BY CRITICISM
UNDER intense pressure following Bafana Bafana’s 3-1 defeat to minnows Mauritania at the weekend, coach Shakes Mashaba compared his predicament to that of Jesus.
The setback on Saturday left the 2017 Afcon qualification campaign hanging by a thread.
Mashaba, whose team needs to walk on water to qualify for Gabon 2017, feels that men in his position often need to rise from the dead when they have been buried by their critics.
“It happens all over – even Jesus Christ himself went through pains but he managed to go on, saving and preaching to people,” the coach said yesterday.
Having claimed in the past that criticism levelled against him was because he is black, his latest remarks have taken the same eccentric direction taken by those of former Springbok mentor Peter de Villiers during his tenure as the national team coach.
De Villiers also took the Biblical route in hitting back at his detractors, telling them: “The same people who threw their robes on the ground when Jesus rode on a donkey were the same people who crowned him and hit him with sticks and stuff like that. And they were the same people who said afterwards how we shouldn’t have done that, he’s the son of God. “So that ’ s exactly what we do.”
Mashaba said today ’ s clash against Senegal in the Nelson Mandela Challenge at Orlando Sta- dium (7pm kickoff) offered his team an opportunity to redeem themselves. Bafana’s shock loss on Saturday has put the coach under the spotlight, especially with the 2018 World Cup qualifiers still to come. But he is unfazed.
“What keeps me going is because I am a coach. There must be someone who is doing it, imagine if coaches were to back down and say ‘ no we have lost’, and then run away.
“Who is going to coach the teams? Whether it is painful or not, we must keep doing it. It is also for the love of the game.”
Asked for his thoughts on scathing comments from fans, Mashaba said he was unaware that the man on the street was nailing him to the cross.
Whatever his philosophy on winning, losing or drawing, a win against Senegal will be the nearest thing Mashaba has come to turning water into wine after the Nouakchott debacle.