Good prep and club cooperation key – Senong

Thabo Senong

South Africa national U20 team coach Thabo Senong believes good preparation and cooperation from clubs and academies played a pivotal role getting the team to fulfil the dream of qualifying for the World Cup.

Speaking in the aftermath of the 1-0 semifinal loss to hosts Zambia in the U20 Africa Cup of Nations, Senong looked back to 2015 when his dream of taking the team to their first World Cup since 1999 crashed in Senegal.

“The major difference will always be preparation, I think we prepared very well this time around and the cooperation from clubs back home in terms of availing players, it was much better this time as compared to last time,” said the Amajita mentor.

Going to the 2015 tournament in Senegal the coach had disjointed preparation as clubs refused to release the players and never got good friendlies to test the team well ahead of the championships.

“Our biggest issue is always to get players for the national team because most of the qualifiers and even the Caf tournament is not played on a Fifa date, which makes it difficult to get players who are commited to their clubs. I must say I am grateful that this time we had all the players, we also had better preparations and we achieved our objective, which was to qualify for the World Cup,” said Senong.

“We had some two-legged friendlies against Mali back in South Africa. We came to Zambia just to adapt to the setup, food, and hotels so that the players wouldn’t have any mental shocks. These were the contributing factors just to ensure we do well,” added Senong.

The Amajita coach is optimistic the preparations for the World Cup later this year in South Korea will be much better and will likely piggyback on Bafana Bafana’s international dates when all players are available to continue with preparations.