Bafana must rise from the dead
Mashaba likens his situation to that of Jesus after facing critics
UNDER intense pressure following Bafana Bafana’s 3-1 defeat to minnows Mauritania at the weekend – a result that left the national team’s 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualification campaign hanging by a thread – coach Shakes Mashaba compared his predicament to that of Jesus.
Mashaba, whose team needs to walk on water to qualify for Gabon 2017, feels that men in his position often need to rise from the dead when they have been buried by their critics.
“It happens all over – even Jesus Christ himself went through pains, but he managed to go on, saving and preaching to people,” the coach said yesterday.
Having claimed in the past that criticism levelled against him was because he is black, Mashaba’s lat- est remarks have taken the same eccentric direction as those of former Springbok mentor Peter de Villiers during his tenure as national team coach.
De Villiers also took the biblical route in hitting back at his detractors, telling them: “The same people who threw their robes on the ground when Jesus rode on a donkey were the same people who crowned him and hit him with sticks.”
Mashaba said tonight’s clash against Senegal in the Nelson Mandela Challenge at Orlando Stadium offered his team an opportunity to quickly redeem themselves.
Bafana’s shock loss on Saturday has put the coach under the spotlight, especially with the 2018 World Cup qualifiers still to come. But he is unfazed.
“What keeps me going is because I am a coach. There must be someone who is doing it, imagine if coaches were to back down and say ‘no we have lost’, and then run away. Whether it is painful or not, we must keep doing it.”
Asked for his thoughts on scathing comments from fans, who have even threatened to boycott tonight’s match, the coach suggested he was completely unaware that the man on the street was nailing him to the cross. “I’ve been getting this thing that people are despondent. I can give you my phone so you can look at the messages of encouragement from people.
“And I have been telling the media ‘don’t talk to four or five people and say people are disappointed’. That is not right,” Mashaba said.
“We rely on you [the press] to bring people to the stadium and now you are saying these things.
“A game is a game, there must be a winner and there must be a loser. If we expect to win all the time then it is going to be unfair because there will be wins, draws and defeats. That is the case worldwide.”
Whatever his philosophy on winning, losing or drawing, a win in the friendly against Senegal tonight will be the nearest thing Mashaba has come to turning water into wine after the Nouakchott debacle.