Mashaba insists Bafana can qualify for World Cup despite worst ever Afcon qualifiers

Shakes Mashaba is adamant that South Africa have a chance to qualify for the World Cup finals in Russia in two years’ despite yet another mediocre result and an embarrassing third place finish in their 2017 African Nations Cup qualifying group.

But he again ducked responsibility for a poor campaign by insisting Bafana Bafana’s scoring woes were out of his hands

“We are really looking forward to qualifying with the team we are setting up, but we have one problem: How are we going to sort out the scoring problem?” he said after a 1-1 draw with lowly-ranked Mauritania at the Mbombela Stadium on Friday saw South Africa finish well off the pace in the group in their worst-ever conclusion to a qualifying campaign.

The result comes one month before the start of the group phase of 2018 World Cup qualification and the haphazard nature of the approach did little to suggest South Africans can hold out much hope of going to Russia. They begin away in Burkina Faso at the beginning of October.

“The boys played well, we were all over Mauritania, it was just most unfortunate things didn’t go as expected. We should have had at least two goals in the first half, we missed a penalty.

"These are the problems that we are sitting with. Our build-up to the opponent’s final third is among the best in the world but we can’t score. What else can we do?” he asked.

Mashaba, who uses the expression “most unfortunately” with regularity and a massively unintended dollop of irony, said a forum among South African coaches was needed to try and solve the problem of finding the net. “

All the top strikers in the league are foreign. If I can have a player like (Khama) Billiat, then maybe we’d score more” he added in a reference to Mamelodi Sundowns’ Zimbabwean international and the Player of the Season for the 2015-16 campaign in the Premier Soccer League.

“But by the way the boys are playing, I don’t doubt we’ll qualify for the World Cup.”

  - TMG Digital