On paper, South Africa’s U20 football team had an easy outing against New Caledonia in the ongoing FIFA U20 World Cup.
The 5-0 scoreline in favour of Raymond Mdaka’s boys is flattering, but the head coach has explained why he is not a happy man.
“It was quite a challenging game because we needed to win at all costs, and we needed goals as well,” said Mdaka after the Group E encounter at the Estadio El Teniente, Chile, in the early hours of Friday morning, South African time.
“We believe we should have scored more than we did, as we were quite wasteful with the chances we created. We played well from the back, but we were sluggish in the front, so we need to improve our tactical and positional discipline, and I think we should have scored nine or ten goals.”
Amajita, who are third in the group, will clash against the log leaders, the United States [US], on Sunday, 5 October, in their last group match.
A win for South Africa will see them through to the knockout phase, but a draw or defeat may still give them a chance to qualify as one of the third-best-ranked teams.
