On leading South African U20 to the AFCON qualifiers in September
This is a massive task that comes with a lot of responsibilities; guiding all these talented players is an honour. But it also needs a lot of hard work, honesty and commitment. Our goal is to qualify for the next Afcon tournament and if we prepare ourselves adequately, we can be able to do it, I have no doubt about that. In the past I have worked with youth players at provincial level where I coached U19, U17 and U15. So, when I was told that I have been given this task to coach our national U20 team, I knew that I have enough experience to draw from. This is something that I have done before. I also understand the general behaviour of this age group and the expectations which come with the job. Yes, it’s going to be a challenge but if you really have a passion to coach and you enjoy working with the youth, it shouldn’t be a problem. And these days there is not a lot of difference between coaching a senior team and the national U20 team. When you are talking about U20 players, you are talking about players who should be already playing at the highest level. We have players (like Shandre Campbell and Luke Bartman) who are already playing in the DStv Premiership and are also part of this age group. In other countries, even U17 players are already playing for their respective senior teams. So, that tells you that there is not a lot of gap. But the only challenge we have, especially in Africa, is that a player can move all the way to senior national team without representing junior national teams. An ideal situation is to start exposing players to international football from junior national team before they can eventually graduate to the U20, U23 and senior national team. The graduation process works well because it gives players an opportunity to start playing international football at an early age and that will then create a longer life span. If a player starts playing professional football at the age of 24, purely based on natural talent then the playing span become a bit shorter. That is where we face challenges as Africans, in particular South Africa.
