South African Football Association (SAFA) President Dr Danny Jordaan has applauded Amajimbos for progressing to the Round of 32 at the FIFA U17 Men’s World Cup in Doha, Qatar.
The South Africans managed a win, a draw and a defeat in their three group stage matches, and the four points were enough to see them advance to the knockout stages.
Coach Vela Khumalo’s charges finished in second place behind log leaders Italy, who made it three wins out from the same number of games, including a 3-1 victory over Amajimbos.
“You can see this team can play football. Arsene Wenger said so in Morocco already after he watched them and he said this is a very good team. Even the FIFA observers at the game were very impressed and said this team can play. The quality of both teams – Italy and South Africa – was very high. Of course South Africa made a few mistakes and it’s suicidal if you make mistakes at this level, but I’m sure that they’ve learned through that process,” said Dr Jordaan.
“But if you look at our team and you look at the U17s of Italy you find some of those players are already playing in the upper levels and the top leagues in Italy, while in South Africa we are not giving these boys a chance at the higher levels. But I think that they’ve grown through this tournament and become a better team and better individuals in the team.”
This was Amajimbos’ second appearance in the FIFA U17 World Cup – the last time was in 2015 in Chile under Molefi Ntseki. This time the South Africans not only got out of the group but also won their opening match of the global tournament – a feat no South African national team has achieved.
With the progression to the knockout phase of a FIFA World Cup, Khumalo’s youngsters emulated the 2009 Amajita squad led by Serame Letsoaka in Egypt, Desiree Ellis’ 2023 Banyana Banyana team in New Zealand and Australia, and, more recently, Raymond Mdaka’s Amajita team in Chile in last month. Dr Jordaan says Amajimbos’ success was planned alongside FIFA’s Wenger.
“They started in Soweto in the COSAFA tournament and when I saw them, they played very well, and they lost in the final, but you could see that this is a team that once it jells it will make an impact on the African continent. Subsequent to that they qualified for the AFCON in Morocco, reached the quarterfinals and qualified for the U17 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. I am very happy to see how this team has emerged and become an integrated structured unit,” added Dr Jordaan.
“One of the persons whose brainchild this is, is Arsene Wenger. He had many meetings with us and they are now looking at starting at U15. In Miami there was a workshop about this and I’m certain that by next year they will announce an U15 tournament on a global basis. The gap between European and African teams is that European teams play regular competition at junior level – and CAF did not. But once Patrice Motsepe took over, he recognized that the first thing to do is to deal with school sport and he took his own money and invested in school sport and that was a kick start of the improvement of African teams in junior competitions and finally senior competition.”
SOURCED FROM SAFA WEBSITE.
