Ephraim ’Shakes’ Mashaba is confident Bafana Bafana are on the right track in terms of widening the selection base for the national team.
This comes after Bafana beat Mauritius 2-0 in their preliminary round, second leg of the Chan qualifiers over the weekend away from home. Bafana won 5-0 on aggregate to book their place into the final round of the qualifiers.
Mashaba kept the bulk of the squad who did the job against Mauritius in the first leg, after some PSL teams had refused to release some of their key players for that match.
Mashaba believes this is one problem they will need to address in the near future, though his players produced a good result over the weekend.
“The problem is we have taken these (Chan) matches very lightly,” Mashaba said at a press conference at OR Tambo after the team’s arrival yesterday. “But I believe that they’ve got so much impact on the nation as a whole. For example, a league can be played for the whole month and if we (the national team) lose a single match, the whole mood changes throughout the country. And that’s why we need to take these games very seriously.
“We’ve got a few names, who unfortunately we cannot disclose, but they have impressed us and deserve to be called up for the upcoming qualifying matches. If you can recall, this team is only eight months old (since he took over as head coach). And when we started we said we wanted to widen the base of our selections. Things have worked according to plan so far and we are happy with what we’ve seen. We now have more players to select from and that’s a good thing.
“I can only urge all our teams to continue with the support they have shown towards the national team. We really appreciate it.”
Mashaba will need all the support he can get when Bafana face Angola in two months time at Mbombela Stadium. The last time these two side met was a month ago when Mashaba’s charges won the international friendly 2-1.
Mashaba, however, understands Angola won’t make it easy for them to book their place in next year’s biennial tournament – set to take place in Rwanda in January.
“It’s not going to be that simple,” he said.
“We can only hope that this performance will continue into our next game. Angola are not an easy side to beat. They are very strong and they’ve got good combinations moving forward. We’ll have about two weeks to prepare for them. It’s very important that we win at home and fight for a good result when we play them away.
“We should take these games seriously because they are on our football calendar,” Mashaba added. “Everybody knows about these games and so why should we have to negotiate to get players (from PSL teams)?
“I would understand if other teams told me that they are faced with a few challenges (at the club) and they can only release a few players. From other teams who are not faced with similar problems, I would expect some full assistance in terms of getting those players released when called up for national duty.”