What are the facts?

Khumalo experienced relative success within the national team structures in the past, having won the 2019 COSAFA Cup with the U17 national team in Gqeberha. He also played a pivotal part in Bafana Bafana’s 2021 COSAFA Cup win in the same province, working as a co-coach alongside coach Morena Ramoreboli.

Based on this, SAFA saw it fitting that he was the man chosen to lead the national team to Egypt 2023, but the Amakhosi coach faced an uphill battle before a ball was even kicked in Eswatini.

However, the first problem was that the team was largely inactive for two years, with most of it attributed to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The last time the national team played any active game was in 2020, when the U17 men’s national team were crowned COSAFA Cup champions after a 4-2 penalty win over Zambia in the COSAFA final at the Gelvandale Stadium, meaning that a new team had to be assembled where players had very little time to acclimatize to one another.

A lack of proper planning meant that Khumalo only had two training sessions with his players.

“The last time we played any active game with the national team was in 2019 when I won this (COSAFA) with the U17. The team has been inactive for two years and remember for me to go to the U20, it was to take the very same team that qualified for U17, take them to U20 and then progress them to U23 and so forth. However, (with) the challenges that came with COVID-19, which is not an excuse, then we were inactive for two years. One big problem is that these are the kids that were born in 2004, these are kids that are writing exams for grade 12 and I though let me have a mixture seeing that they are not even active in their respective teams, they are not playing, so let me try and have them in,” Khumalo told Andile Ncube on Sports Night Amplified.

In addition to the team’s inactivity, another issue that Khumalo faced was the number of players who were writing preliminary grade 12 exams, which took place at the same time as the national team camp, meaning that the coach had to make do without a number of players completing their matric year.

Khumalo said at the start of the camp that he had just five players despite calling up 33 players from which his final 20-man squad would be selected, as a number of teams refused to release their players who featured in the DStv Diski Challenge. The coach revealed that some of the players released went back and forth to serve their local teams in the DDC.

Khumalo, in turn, turned to the tried in tested in a number of Chiefs players. In total, eight Amakhosi players formed part of his final team that did battle in Eswatini, seven of which featured in the starting XI against Mozambique in the semifinal, which they lost 2-1.