After effectively the most dismal sequence of results since the formative year of Bafana Bafana in 1993, caretaker coach Pitso Mosimane says his squad have no alternative but to ”play for pride” when this year’s Cosafa Cup campaign is launched against Swaziland in Gaborone on Saturday.
And with South Africa’s world ranking having descended to an unseemly 53rd position after failing to score in three defeats at the African Nations Cup and then playing to a goalless friendly draw with 141st-ranked Lesotho last week, Bafana’s pride is indeed in need of an urgent pick-me-up.
Swaziland at 138 are only three places above Lesotho in the Fifa rankings, but Mosimane says there is no room for complacency against a team with a sprinkling of competent professionals — or to minimise the importance of the occasion.
The Bafana coach might have directed his sentiments at the officials of the South African Football Association (Safa) and the Premier Soccer League (PSL) who seemingly thought nothing of allowing the Absa Cup final to be played on the same afternoon as Bafana’s Cosafa Cup opener — thereby depriving the South African squad of players from Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs.
And the Swaziland game, with an undignified 1pm kick-off in order not to clash with the television presentation of the Chiefs-Pirates game in Durban, might not be the walk in the park that Safa appears to imagine.
Ironically, Mosimane admits that two of the most dangerous opponents in the Swaziland ranks are ”particularly familiar”.
”Dennis Masina, who is now playing for the Belgian club KV Mechelen, was with me at Supersport United for several years,” says the Bafana coach, ”and Tony Tsabedze is still one of my club’s key players.
”It goes without saying, both will be trying to impress and show me a thing or two.”
Bafana will be hoping the introduction of six players from newly crowned PSL champions Mamelodi Sundowns will provide the poise and scoring power to take the initial steps on the rocky path to a meaningful revival.
In what is a quaint format in its own right, the winner of the Bafana-Swaziland game moves into the second stanza of the Cosafa Cup on Sunday against the winners of the game between Botswana and Madagascar — billed as the main game in Gaborone on Saturday.
And anything less than two comprehensive victories over the weekend will be viewed as a continuation of Bafana’s mediocre performance. — Sapa