Lower divisions fertile enough to fish in
Ifind it weird that our national Under-23 team is struggling to put together a decent team for the Caf Under-23 Africa Cup of Nations which serves as the qualifiers for next year’s Olympics. I have heard Pitso Mosimane pleading with other teams to release their players for the tournament which is played outside the Fifa calendar. I have also heard some people talking badly about SuperSport United for their refusal to release their players. But I must say that I am 100% behind Matsatsantsa on this.
Why push for their players when teams in the GladAfrica Championship are forced to field two players under the age of 23 in every game. This means on a full fixture weekend, there are 32 players who qualify for David Notoane’s team active in competitive games every weekend.
I am sure you can have all 23 players from this division if proper monitoring was done. Okay, let us put the Championship aside. There is the PSL’s development league, the MultiChoice Diski Challenge which is now unofficially the national under-21 league.
That gives you a pool of over 176 players who are under the age of 23 who are active and train every day and play competitive games every other weekend. Now if you add the 32 players from the Championship to the ones from the MDC, you get a pool of over 200 players to select from. This
Sibongiseni Gumbi
excludes players in Safa leagues and all that.
What are we telling these players if we say the national under-23 team still can’t do their business without Sipho Mbule and Teboho Mokoena? These two players should be reserved for the senior national team now having earned their stripes in the juniors already. Breaking into the senior team at club level means you are a finished product and no longer being developed. The Under-23 team is a developmental side which should be preparing players for Bafana.
The Championship rule which forces teams to play at least two players under the age of 23 in every match and the MDC structure should make it easy enough for Notoane and his team to scout for fresh talent. If the pool of over 200 that these structures alone provide doesn’t have 23 players capable of qualifying us for the Olympics then we might as well close football in the country. It means we have no future.
And if the ever so glorified ‘Vision 2022’ means that our junior national teams also fish in the same pond as Bafana Bafana, then it is redundant. The Championship
and MDC are fertile enough for Notoane and other junior teams coaches to fish from.
Wanting players that you know you are not going to get to me feels like preparing a good excuse for when you flop. He can now come back and say “we didn’t have all the players we wanted” when he is knocked out of that competition.
Since taking over the team, Notoane knew that the tournament falls outside the Fifa dates and was unlikely to get players who are regulars in their Absa Premiership teams. That should have told him to intensify his scouting with more focus on the MDC and Championship whose schedule allows for some of their games to be suspended for the entire duration of the tournament.