Had it not been for Vincent Tseka’s blooper, some Bafana Bafana supporters would be now going through the US map and circling must see places such as Times Square, The Grand Canyon, Disney World, the White House, Las Vegas, the Statue of Liberty, Hollywood, the Empire State Building and many bucket list sites to visit, as they planned their sojourns for the 2026 Fifa World Cup, to be co-hosted by the US, Mexico and Canada.
And because of Tsekagate, Bafana fans are still on tenterhooks about qualifying for the biggest sporting event in the whole wide world. The senior national football team was cruising nicely and leading the group comfortably until Tseka happened. Now it’s a sense of déjá vu yet again.
Now Bafana have to beat Rwanda on Tuesday and hope that Group C leaders Benin falters against Nigeria in Uyo.
While Bafana are still chomping at the bit to book their ticket to the Fifa 2026 World Cup, their younger brothers Amajita made the country proud after they reached the quarter finals of the Under-20 World Cup. They were knocked out by Columbia on Thursday night.
Bafana have one more hurdle to jump as they seek to pack their bags for their first Fifa World Cup since 2002 in South Korea and Japan. In 2010, they were pampered with free, front-row seats by virtue of being the organisers and hosts – and even after a free ticket, they still made unsolicited history, by becoming the first host country to bomb out of the tournament in the first round.
Three World Cup tournaments have come and gone, with Bafana failing dismally to qualify. The qualifiers for the 2014 tournament in Brazil were cata-strophic, while the morale and the optimism to reach the finals in Russia in 2018 was at an all-time low.
Coach Hugo Broos was in charge for the 2022 Qatar campaign and Bafana held their own until they were knocked out in scandalous circumstances by Ghana in the Cape Coast.
The junior national teams too, irritatingly, had missed one World Cup too many. They would haphazardly qualify for one tournament, only to miss the next one without a legitimate excuse, except for poor planning and the wrong selection of coaching personnel.
The matter of not qualifying had been an accepted norm; it was just as mundane as spilt milk, and nothing much.
But since the arrival of Broos four years ago, the mindset shift of the players has been markedly positive. Even the junior teams and players seem to be drinking from the well of the Belgian mentor when it comes to a winning mentality. The coaches too, such as Amajita’s Raymond Mdaka and Helman Mkhalele, Broos’ assistant at Bafana.
We can also pray that the calamity-prone and bumbling lot at Safa will have a proper plan for the SA under-23 for their journey to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Lest we forget, SA failed to make it to the 2024 Paris Olympics. Then part-time coach David Notoane resigned on a radio show after his team could not even reach the last stage of the African qualifiers, the Under-23 Nations Cup. He blamed Safa and the PSL for not giving him the support he needed to drive the team forward.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, has been said regarding the SA Under-23 since. The 2028 LA Games may seem to be too far over the horizon, but time can bamboozle anyone.
But as we all know, the Safa executives are waiting for next year’s presidential elections. They will get the ball rolling only once they have elected their leader. The focus now is on the dirty politicking, discrediting one another to get elected onto the gravy train.
That would leave no time to prepare the team for the Olympics – we have been down that road way too often.
