Amajita win bronze, now for World Cup

SA coach Thabo Senong was pleased with the bronze medal gained by his side at the 2019 African Under-20 Championships‚ but admits there is much work to be done before the Fifa Under-20 World Cup to be held in Poland in May.

Amajita held Nigeria to a 0-0 draw and then won 5-3 on penalties in the third-place playoff on Saturday.

“I’m happy for my boys because they won and we played against a very good team in Nigeria‚” Senong said.

“It was mission accomplished because we wanted to rotate the squad and give some players caps‚ we wanted to approach the game with a winning mentality because we saw this as preparation for the World Cup,” the coach said.

Senong was missing several of his first-choice players‚ such as Monaco forward Lyle Foster and Utrecht playmaker Tashreeq Matthews‚ who were not released by their clubs. It should not be an issue during the World Cup‚ for which clubs will be compelled to release players.

The coach now faces a fine balancing act in drafting those players back into the set-up with minimal opportunity for preparation matches.

“We will assess and continue to build a team going forward‚” he said. “Our boys don’t have enough international experience. We need a lot of friendlies [before the World Cup].

“We have a good team‚ but we lack competitive friendlies‚ which we didn’t play before we came here [Nigeria].

“We have played five quality matches in this tournament and we can only now look for more competition of this calibre to improve our team.”