Bafana coach wants in on European tournament

Sy Lerman

There will be no slowdown to coach Stuart Baxter’s Bafana Bafana plans despite the failure to qualify for this year’s World Cup in Russia and Caf’s mandatory postponement of all Afcon qualifying games that were due to resume in March.

Indeed, as a substitute for the Nations Cup qualifying games in March, the Bafana coach is hoping to secure a place in one of the “friendly” four-nation tournaments due to be staged in Europe in March as part of a continued build-up of the national team that was evident to some degree in the failed final World Cup qualifying matches.

“I have been in this game long enough to be realistic about weighing up successes and failures,” said Baxter, “and I truly believe the current Bafana squad provides a valid foundation for the future with more time at its disposal. But, at the same time, we need to implement a degree of improvement as well and unearthing all the best available talent”.

Baxter said he was unperturbed by the often-reckless and sometimes unsubstantiated criticsm that has been directed at him.

“In this business,” he added, “it’s almost par for the course for critics with their own agendas to put a knife in your back”.

And the Bafana coach provided an example of these unbalanced attacks by pointing to the newspaper headline that trumpeted the message “Baxter backs pleas for return of Shakes Mashaba as the Bafana coach”.

The story, in fact, was all about a former Bafana player calling for the axed Mashaba to be restored to his post with Bafana – and not propagating the bizarre message suggesting that Baxter was calling for his own head.