It was a good learning curve for Under-20s

One cannot help but be proud of how our boys performed at the Caf Under-20 Afcon in Zambia, although we failed on our ultimate mandate, which was to win it.

It is sad that we didn’t go all the way and become African champions, which would have boosted our image and standing going to the Fifa Under-20 World Cup in South Korea.

But perhaps it was a good omen as it could have blinded us to our shortcomings and we would go there overly confident in our ability, only to suffer terribly when it mattered most. After all, they say you don’t fix it if it’s not broken, and now we know we are not the finished and well-oiled machine we want to be.

Now that we have come short, we have had our eyes opened to the things that we still need to work on and we will be embarking on that.

There were more positives that we picked up from our sojourn in Zambia, and we were generally happy with our progress.

Among the positives is that we managed to match physically imposing teams and counter them with quick play. I still feel we need to improve our speed of play, moving the ball around faster against bigger opponents.

Playing a friendly match against Mali helped us get our game plan right in terms of this. Mali have big players, and they prepared us and we managed to hold our own when we played Cameroon and Senegal, who are similar to them.

The standard was high and demanded total focus and we were happy in that department although we have room to improve at the back in terms of lapses in concentration. But it is nothing too big, we just need to work on it.

Our finishing was also not at the level we would have wished it to be, and we now have to work on it make sure we bury more chances and kill matches earlier than we did.

The other good thing is that the actual World Cup is not too far away, like in previous years when you qualified with the tournament a year ahead, which made you lose momentum, and some of the players who helped you qualify were over the age limit by the time the tournament started.

Playing the Cosafa Cup late last year was also good for us, because it was good practice. Look at how the two finalists from that tournament have qualified for the World Cup, and Zambia went on and won the Afcon as well.

We had time to reboot and look at our faults and improve before the Afcon started, and the same will happen now going to the World Cup.

It was good to see Orlando Pirates win on Sunday after such a long winless streak. It would have been a disaster for them to lose that match.

When you can’t win against teams in your league, then when you get a chance against a lower division team, you need to ensure you win convincingly to help regain your confidence. I am sure this win will strengthen team cohesion and the spirits will now be high, because they have got that important win.