There comes a time when a coach makes bold decisions on his quest but I fail to note that about our current coach. He's had the same core team that his predicessor and mentor Carlos Alberto Pareirra left behind since our 2010 world cup appearance with very minimal noticeable changes. This is the same team that played only three games at the world cup, played throughout the Afcon 2012 qualification and now while our peers are competing at the biggest showpiece in the continent we found ourselves playing friendlies to either open new stadium to host or helped some of them in their preparations.
What is more puzzling to me is that the same players were selected to play these friendly games in January 2012 and thanks to some teams refusing with their players the team had to change. It is games like these you put new faces infront of hostile fans in the opponents backyard and see how the rise to the occasion. It is Mosimane's duty to show us that when all else fails we still have a May Mahlangu, Dylon Claasen and Eric Matoho to mention but a few, to always step up. What does playing against Equatorial Guinea help Teko Modise, Simphiwe Tshabalala or any other senior team member with...? They played at confederations cup, afcon cup and the world cup. What needs to be of importance to the coach regarding such players is form, as long as their club form is excellent they will be selected to the team for the games deemed important if he really needs them. They have bucket loads of national team experience, we cannot keep calling them for every friendly game we get especially when what we preparing for is the future.
To be frank I dont care about rankings at all, I want a winning team. If we play friendlies and get thrashed with a youthful team and in the process we, south africans notice a number of talented players that look like the coach can sharpen up for bigger tournaments in the future I'll be happier. We cannot always consider a ranking while walking into a friendly game because it will only come into play once we have done the important duty of all which is qualifying, so putting emphasis on a ranking when you havent qualified yet you actually saying you want to qualify even though you wont want to play certain teams after qualifying and thats a coward approach.
When other national teams have a spell of not producing the goods they look elsewhere. When Ghana's glorified starstudded team got them nowhere they brewed a completely new hungrier youthful side and with a few experienced senior players weren't we all singing their praises in 2010? The Egyptian team realised they wont qualify for Afcon 2012 with two qualification games to go... they changed focused and decided to rather use the two games to help the U23 side have a thourough preparation for their London Olympics qualifiers... Guess what, they will be partcipating in the Olympics come June 2012.
My point here is if Mosimane is really building why are we always seeing the same names being called up, most of which are over 25years of age already. Are we gonna use the same team that has excelled in playing draws and in the process managing a lame ranking that does nothing to our football in our next Afcon appearance or the senior national side technical team is gonna work with junior national team and domestic league coaches to produce talent that can walk into the field with one mentality of winning?
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