Kickoff (Cape Town)
14 October 2008
Swaziland's national team coach Ephraim 'Shakes' Mashaba has described the weekend's 6-0 demolition of Sihlangu at the hands of Togo as a bitter lesson.
He adds that the result sends a message that Swaziland are not there yet as a football country.
"We didn't play well and let's not apologise or beat about the bush. We need to go back and do the re-building phase," he noted.
Sihlangu were flummoxed under an avalanche of goals so much that Mashaba even wished the game could end before half time.
"Let's not make any excuses about it, this was a bad result. I still don't know but I suspect we were over-motivated. In the first half we didn't play at all," Mashaba told the Swaziland Times said with a tinge of bitterness in his voice.
He said the mere fact that Adebayor could dribble from the half-way line and score was very pathetic.
"It shouldn't happen at this level of the game. This started in our friendly game against Mozambique and I am totally unhappy," he added.
Meanwhile, Swaziland's Director of Sports and Culture, Maswazi Shongwe attributed the humiliation to the ill-treatment meted out to the local squad after their arrival in Accra.
"First, they did not welcome us and we had to organise our own transport and then they chased us away from the training ground," Shongwe lashed out.
He said the boys had got a lesson on what happens when you play an away game.
"We have to accept this because this is what God has given us. This is a learning experience and we should go back and work on our mistakes," he said.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Kickoff. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
