Under intense pressure after Bafana Bafana's 3-1 defeat by minnows Mauritania at the weekend - a result that left the national team's 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualification campaign hanging by a thread - coach Shakes Mashaba compared his predicament to that of Jesus. Mashaba, whose team needs to walk on water to qualify for Gabon 2017, feels that men in his position often need to rise from the dead after they have been buried by their critics."It happens all over - even Jesus Christ went through pains, but he managed to go on, saving and preaching to people," the coach said yesterday.Having claimed in the past that he is criticised because he is black, Mashaba's latest remarks have gone in the eccentric direction taken by former Springbok mentor Peter de Villiers.De Villiers hit back at his detractors by telling them: "The same people who threw their robes on the ground when Jesus rode on a donkey were the same people who crowned him and hit him with sticks and stuff like that, and were the same people who said afterwards how we shouldn't have done that, he's the Son of God."Mashaba said tonight's clash with Senegal in the Nelson Mandela Challenge at Orlando Stadium offered his team theopportunity to redeem themselves quickly.Bafana's shock loss on Saturday has put the coach in the spotlight, especially with the 2018 World Cup qualifiers still to come. But he is unfazed."What keeps me going is because I am a coach. There must be someone who is doing it. Imagine if coaches were to back down and say 'no we have lost', and then run away."..