Don't only blame players for defeat
I STILL have memories of Silindokuhle Mbatha's mesmerising Nigeria's defence, Tebogo Langerman overlapping to provide crosses, Bernard Parker's fighting spirit till the end, Tefo Mashamaite towards the end of the game constantly being found near goalposts assisting our strikers, Katlego "Mahoota" Mashego's attempts to get goals indeed disappointed by Vuyo Mere's casual defence and Siphiwe Tshabalala's failure to rise to the occasion, Hlompo Kekana doing all the dirty work and his passionate fighting spirit, and not forgetting the useless Matthew Pattinson.
But then how do you score against a solid Nigerian defence with only one mobile striker in the form of Parker? With only two creative midfielders, that is Mbatha and Shabba. The long and short of it is Gordon Igesund didn't plan for a win but a draw.
We all saw that when he started to introduce offensive players like "All you need is love" Shabangu, Ryan Chapman and Mahoota, our team started to shape up.
Indeed as South Africans we were so emotional on Sunday but that shouldn't cloud our judgment of what transpired. Our players shouldn't be the only ones who shoulder the blame while we have a coach who plays 4-5-1 – in fact they play under coaches' instructions.
We have all heard Igesund saying he's happy with how things are and we can interpret that to mean players follow his instructions.
Changing the name and colours is absurd and shows poverty of ideas on what needs to be done by the Safa leadership. It is unscientific to cure a sickness without diagnostic assessment of the actual cause.
Instead of being harsh with our players we must frankly identify the actual problem on all fronts: players, technical team and management
Thembinkosi Josopu, Mfuleni, Cape Town