SA U20 coach Raymond Mdaka says, despite having a negative start to the U20 FIFA World Cup, he is confident his side has what it takes to advance to the knockout round of the competition.
Amajita lost 2-1 in their opening Group E match against France but will get an opportunity to turn the corner when they face New Caledonia at 1am (SA time) on Friday.
“I think we have a good account of ourselves, but it’s obviously not the result we were looking for, and if we got a draw, maybe then we would have somewhat of a cushion to get to the second,” Mdaka said.
Team can still qualify for knockout stage
“It’s a game of results, and we’ll see what we can do. There are only three games for each team, and we can still move forward and qualify.
“We are left with two games [New Caledonia and USA] and we’re going to sort ourselves out and see how best we can approach the next game, we believe we can be able to make a mark,” said Mdaka.
Ahead of the Caledonia game, Amajita midfield workhorse Lazola Maku said that they are not under pressure, as they also lost their first game at the Africa Cup of Nations and went on to win the tournament.
However, Maku emphasised that they will not underestimate their opponents either, who come from a 9-1 walloping from the US.
“We will go there with the mentality of getting maximum points, so that we know in our match against the USA, we can also try to get maximum points.
“The France game was a wake-up call for us, so we are looking forward to the clash against New Caledonia. We don’t feel the pressure, but we experienced this in Egypt (losing the first game), so this was just a wake-up call.
“We respect all teams, even though they [New Caledonia] lost 9-1.”
He said they should not go there with that mentality of saying, “We can also beat them with the same scoreline, as much as they lost heavily, we respect them and what they are capable of”.
