Nelspruit - Bafana Bafana coach Shakes Mashaba defended Thamsanqa Gabuza for the penalty he missed in the 1-1 draw with Mauritania at Mbombela Stadium on Friday. But Mashaba questioned the standard of South African strikers in the same breath.
Bafana could have finished their disappointing 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers with their first win on home soil had Gabuza converted from the spot-kick. But the forward, who finished as Bafana’s top goalscorer in the qualifiers with three goals while he struggles for game time at his club, hit a tame penalty that was easily saved by Mauritania’s second choice goalkeeper Salah Boubacar. The draw meant that Bafana finished third in Group M, behind Cameroon and Mauritania. That penalty miss perfectly summarised Bafana’s qualifiers, they find themselves in good scoring chances but can't make the most of them.
“I know people will say why did he take it?,” Mashaba said. “We don’t normally appoint players to take penalties. Everybody takes it willingly because we practice penalties at the training session. They all score them. Unfortunately for Gabuza, these things happen. It’s not for the first time (that a player misses a penalty). We have seen world class players miss penalties in very crucial games. All in all I was happy with the performance. We are still on course in building a team for 2018 and vision 2022. If you look at the number of players who are from the junior teams, it shows that we are doing well.”
Bafana Bafana will shift their focus to the World Cup qualifiers that start next month with a trip to Burkina Faso. Senegal and Cape Verde complete their group which they need to win if they’re to make up for their Afcon failures and qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
While Mashaba said he is confident that Bafana will go to Russia, that confidence was tinged with concern because of the team's woeful display in front of goals.
"With the kind of performances we are putting on, there is only one problem and I haven’t heard anyone say, ‘how are we going to solve the scoring problem?’ We created more than 10 chances (against Mauritania)," Mashaba said. "We went on to miss a penalty. Nobody says anything about that. Those are the problems that we are sitting with. We are building up well from the back, up to the opposition’s third. That’s where we get problems of finishing. What else can we do? If you look at the top goalscorers in our league, they’re all foreign players. We aren’t talking about that. I heard someone say that if we could have a player like (Zimbabwean and Mamelodi Sundowns forward, Khama) Billiat (we would be deadly). If I could have player like him in our striking force, with the chances we are creating – we are gone. I am not saying that our players are not good enough, they’re trying.”
Independent Media