Cosafa is our Afcon prep, coach

DAVID NOTOANE is already thinking about the Fifa Under– 20 World Cup which will take place in South Korea later next year.

This is where South Africa’s national Under-20 assistant coach would like to see his side competing in the coming year, Amajita having missed out on the opportunity to do so for the New Zealand edition a year ago.

But first, Notoane knows his side will have to fight to defend their Cosafa Cup title when the Southern African regional tournament kicks off at Moruleng Stadium in Rustenburg tomorrow.

The coach admitted that going all the way to reach the final of this tournament, would help in their preparation for upcoming Africa Under-20 Cup of Nations (Afcon), where the Caf Under-20 World Cup participants will be decided.

“Yes,” Notoane said. “I believe that it will help us. Sure, the (Afcon) tournament is two months away but we need all the preparation we can get to help us do better than we did the last year. I believe the Cosafa Cup will help us achieve just that.

“There were a whole lot of factors which contributed to us not doing well for that 2015 Afcon edition,” Notoane added. “For example, some of our players reported for camp later than expected. Some of them arrived about four to two days before the tournament kicked off and that affected our performance very badly. Some players even struggled to adjust to the weather conditions there in Senegal. We learnt from our mistakes though. We intend to do things differently this time around.”

Amajita are in Group A and will take on Lesotho in the first group match tomorrow (Kick-off 7.30pm), before they lock horns with Swaziland and Botswana in pursuit of finishing top of their group.

Having beaten Lesotho twice before during the 2017 Under-20 Afcon qualifiers in the third and final round, Notoane is nevertheless expecting a difficult tie with the Mountain Kingdom side.

“We know what we are up against,” Notoane said. “We beat them twice during the qualifiers and chances are they’ll come into the match with the intention of avenging those two defeats. The same thing applies to every side we’ll be playing against in our group. Every country in our region wants to beat us. That’s just the way it is. This will be a nice challenge for our boys. It will stretch them both physically and emotional leading up to the upcoming Africa Under-20 Cup of Nations tournament (set to take place in Zambia).

“And that’s what we want. We need them to be emotional and physically strong ahead of the World Cup decider.”