Shakes Mashaba believes that a stronger Cosafa Cup, with Southern African nations taking it seriously, will help the region stop being the whipping boys on the continent. Mashaba said this after winning his third Cosafa Cup as a coach, the second with the senior national team with the other coming with the Under-20s in Lesotho in 2014.
That title with the Under-20s was the springboard for Mashaba to guide the senior national team to qualifying for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon). But this title came after he couldn’t repeat that feat when Bafana Bafana failed to book a place in next year’s Afcon in Gabon.
But what should consolidate Mashaba is that this Cosafa Cup was won by the national Under-23 team, who played in place of Bafana Bafana to prepare for the Olympics in Brazil in August.
“We need to change our way of doing things and thinking,” Mashaba said. “If we claim to be the big boys, we have to back that up by winning things. If you look at our clubs on the continent, they’re not doing well. This should be the 20th edition of the Cosafa Cup, and we had won it only three times before this. Three times! That’s not enough for a nation that claims to be the best in Africa.
“Winning this Cosafa Cup should be a consistent thing. If you look at Zambia and Zimbabwe, they’ve won it four times. Those are the people who should be boasting. We have just caught up with them by winning this for a fourth time. We need to make sure that when the next edition comes, we win it. The more we win it, the more people will start respecting this cup. If you look at the World Cup qualifiers, West African countries dominate. Where is South Africa and Botswana? We need not be the whipping boys in the Afcon. (At the moment) when we’re going to the Afcon, we are just visiting there.
“We don’t win anything. The last time we won it was in 1996 and after that we vanished into thin air.”
This generation will be looking to change that when they’re integrated into the senior national team after the Olympics. They didn’t have much time to bask in their achievement of being regional champions. After they returned from Namibia yesterday, they no sooner left for Japan where they will play an international friendly on Wednesday with their Olympic-bound team.
Japan will offer them a stern test and give them an opportunity to show if they have learned from some of the mistakes they made in the Cosafa Cup so that they’re stronger when they have to face Brazil, Iraq and Denmark.
“We have a couple of players that we are earmarking for the future as part of vision 2022,” Mashaba said. “We are looking at these boys for the 2022 World Cup, as 2018 is just around the corner. With the performances that these boys have been putting in, we are definitely sure that they will (graduate to Bafana Bafana soon). If you look at (things) since this technical team took over, there are a number of new young players. If you look at the captain of this team (Rivaldo Coetzee) he is a Bafana Bafana stalwart. Going to Rio is another springboard for these players so that we can look at them for the World Cup qualifiers.” - The Star