FANYANA MABUZA, Mbabane | Monday 4.30pm.
SWAZILAND’S Under-20 soccer team insisted this weekend that it cheated at the recent regional championships in South Africa purely for patriotic reasons.
National Football Association of Swaziland secretary general, Mike Vilikazi, said at the weekend the team fielded over-aged players in an attempt to impress judges and boost the chances for the small Kingdom to host 2003 Africa Under 17’s Championships.
“We would be able to create many jobs and other investment for Swaziland if we were chosen to host the championships,” said Vilikazi.
“We are not doing this for ourselves but for the nation as a whole.”
Vilikazi also lashed out at “unpatriotic” Swazi journalists who exposed the cheating by identifying three over-aged players in the team to the Congress of Southern Africa Football Association (Cosafa) regional championships in South Africa. “We know that it was individual journalists who brought this to Cosafa’s attention by asking questions.
They even asked if Swaziland would be suspended or punished in some way,” he said. “These journalists, and we know who they are, were not thinking about the Kingdom’s interests when they did this.”
The three players named as over-aged are Njabuliso Simelane, Mduduzi Sibiya and Mxolisi ‘Stopper’ Mtsetfwa. — African Eye News Service