Shakes begins planning
ON LOOKOUT: COACH SEARCHING FOR NEW GENERATION
Mashaba denied use of SuperSport’s young matric pair.
Shakes Mashaba would like “four of five” players from his 22-man Cosafa Cup squad to show him they have what it takes to graduate to the next level with a good display in the tournament.
Mashaba yesterday began preparing for the tournament that will be played in Rustenburg from Sunday until May 30. He had 16 players, with others like Thamsanqa Sangweni and Phumelele Bhengu set to be in camp today to prepare for the tournament that will feature 12 of the 14 nations that make up Cosafa – Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zambia – along with Ghana and Tanzania who are the invited guests. Angola and Comoros didn’t enter.
Bafana Bafana will only start their campaign on May 25 against Botswana, with both nations bypassing the group stages to start in the quarterfinals at Moruleng Stadium. Mashaba will lead his side against Lesotho, twice, and hopefully play three matches against local clubs when they reach Rustenburg to prepare for the tournament.
“Before we can talk about winning Chan and the Africa Cup of Nations and looking at the World Cup, we have got to be champions in the region,” Mashaba said. “That’s going to be critical.”
This tournament will help Mashaba widen his selection base in what will be a busy year, with the qualifiers for the 2016 African Nations Champions (Chan) – for home-based players – in Rwanda starting next month and qualifiers for the 2017 Afcon also starting next month.
Mashaba could still see some players drop out of the Cosafa Cup squad, like Mzikayise Mashaba who will playing in the Nedbank Cup final for Mamelodi Sundowns and the duo of Athenkosi Dlala and Mondli Mpoto.
The SuperSport United pair are in matric where they are catching up after being left behind when they were in Niger with the national Under-17 team that will travel to Chile in October for the World Cup.
“We were discussing it. They couldn’t come to our first training session because of school,” Mashaba said. “We said to the team manager, let’s see what we can do. Maybe if they have problems with school, and the registration for Cosafa has closed, we will go minus the two boys. People think that in football, we don’t worry about the player’s education, but that’s the number one thing that comes to our mind. We always say let’s not disturb players.”