Young Blood That’s what Bafana Bafana need ahead of crucial qualifiers
● The need to blood new, younger players in Bafana Bafana without delay ahead of qualifiers for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations and 2022 Fifa World Cup is one thing that the SA Football Association cannot ignore anymore. This realisation came as calls for the axing of Bafana coach Stuart Baxter continued this week.
Highlands Park coach Owen da Gama led the charge for a change at the Bafana helm, saying the national team needed to return to playing the “SA way”.
This was after Bafana had an indifferent Afcon tournament in Egypt where Baxter’s charges won two and lost three of their matches.
Echoing Da Gama’s call for a change in the coaching department at Bafana is former SA international John Moeti, who was part of the Bafana team which won the Afcon on home soil in 1996.
While Moeti and Da Gama agreed the country has had enough of Baxter, Safa’s technical director and captain of that 1996 team Neil Tovey was cagey on the Briton’s future, saying it was “not my department to comment on the coaches’ future”.
“We are waiting for the Afcon report from the coach,” said Tovey.
Moeti said it was vital to look at every department in the Bafana team before throwing the youngsters into the deep end.
Teboho Mokoena, Luther Singh, Khanya Leshabela, Lyle Foster, Gift Links, Phakamani Mahlambi, Aubrey Modiba, Abbubaker Mobara and Grant Margeman are some of the young players seen as capable of taking Bafana to their future.
Ever the cautious one even in his playing days as a combative midfielder for Bafana and captain of Orlando Pirates in the mid ’90s, Moeti (51) said there’s no need for drastic changes for the sake of it for Bafana.
“All we seek now is continuity. I think the technical team should reflect and look at what were the weaknesses of the team currently and where does it need to be strengthened,” said Moeti who had 29 Bafana caps.
“We need to ask ourselves what role these youngsters are going to take when they come in. You don’t want to raise levels of expectations that will burden them before their performances.”
What is clear, and Moeti agrees with this, is that Bafana cannot be expected to move forward with Baxter, who has battled to find consistency in the results and the playing style of the team.
Bring back Shakes Mashaba
Baxter also showed, with the team he chose for Afcon 2019, that blooding in young players was never his main priority.
“You want the young players to ease into the team by looking at where the team needs strengthening. You don’t just do it because you have youngsters,” advised Moeti.
“Is there a position that Lyle [Foster] can play? Yes we know that we are short of quality strikers. So let’s bring him in now in preparation for the qualifiers.
“Let’s look at our midfield. Do we have a playmaker? I think we are lacking in that area. We don’t have a player who will take the game by the scruff of the neck and make the team play. We have ball players, but they are still in their shells.”
Bafana were this week drawn in Group C against Ghana, Sudan and the winner of a play-off between Mauritius and São Tomé and Príncipe in the 2021 Afcon qualifiers.
Bafana will play against Ghana and Sudan in November before a 10-month break that will last until September 2020.
Moeti said Bafana needed a new coach in the mould of former coach Shakes Mashaba, who was replaced by Baxter in the middle of the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign.
“We need to answer what is it that makes this team so inconsistent? The type of play that we possess is so unique, but we don’t know how to execute it consistently.
“We thrive when we put pressure on the opposition. We need a person who sees it and buys into that unique style of our play. The nearest person to that ideal is Shakes Mashaba.
“Put his personality aside, Shakes is the one who is close to understanding our play and believes in that.
“We have a unique style that brought us success in the past. We need a person who understands that.
“Clive Barker [the Bafana coach who won the Afcon in 1996] was not very astute technically, but we succeeded because he understood this uniqueness of our style and he believed in it. What Barker did was to mobilise the players to realise what they have and to express themselves on that.
“Bafana were never conservative whether we were playing home or away. Right now we are not doing that,” said Moeti.
“Baxter has reached his ceiling. I think he’s very conservative and that is contradictory to what I’m talking about.”
Growing calls for coach Stuart Baxter to be axed