Amajita early exit another big blow for SA football

A 3-2 defeat by Lesotho last weekend means that South Africa’s Under-20 national team will miss out on the next edition of the African youth championships as well as the world youth championships.

This is yet another big blow for the progress of South African football, it has robbed our youngsters of a valuable opportunity to participate at the highest level of their age group. Our boys could have had a chance to learn and prepare themselves for future challenges, it is indeed a step backwards.

Blaming Safa every time our national teams lose important matches has been overdone, but if truth be told, Safa should take the fall for this one.

It seems as if Safa expected Khabo Zondo and his boys to perform magic — how could it expect the team to go far without adequate preparation. Safa focused so much on the World Cup and completely forgot that there were other important issues to attend to. Playing against Lesotho who, mind you, had something like two months to prepare for the game was not going to be a walk in the park, it showed when they beat our boys 2-0 at home in the first leg. Beating them in their backyard was quite an impossible mission, but the boys tried their best, which comes to show that had they had enough time to prepare, things could have been better.

Safa can have a childish carelessness about it at times. Sometimes I wonder if a word like planning exists in its vocabulary, because if it did, we would not have so much embarrassment in our football.

Maybe Safa needs to be reminded that players like Lionel Messi and a whole host of other world stars are where they are today because of proper planning and organisation. They gained experience and a taste of international football because of such tournaments as the world youth championships. Looking closer to home, Ghana were the best African team at the World Cup partly because of their success in participating in youth tournaments. Safa needs to wake up and smell the coffee.

If the same mistake is not avoided, the Under-23 team will suffer the same fate. It will be a big disappointment if Shakes Mashaba’s hugely talented squad fails to qualify for the London Olympics because of Safa’s carelessness and poor planning.

The junior national teams are the lifeblood of any senior national team, their failure is always detrimental to a nation that takes its football seriously. Safa needs to understand this or we can forget about any future success from Bafana Bafana.