Lesotho U20 national team coach Bob Mafoso took the blame for his team’s premature elimination from the on going COSAFA U20 Youth Championships.
Lesotho ended their campaign with only a point and bottom of Group C despite playing in the final with South Africa in 2017. Mafoso told the ZamFoot crew in an interview that as a coach after such a performance you should take the blame.
“Let me first take the blame as a coach maybe the preparations were not good. I mean if you perform like this then it means you did not prepare well. We were only able to retain about 4 or 5 players so it will be unfair to say the same team played in the final because it was a completely a new team. So I think those two factors it could be that we did not prepare well or Maybe we can not be judged by last years performance because this is a new team, ” He said.
Mafoso said the major problem his team struggled with was the speedy of play. He was speaking shortly after his team suffered a one nil loss at the hands of Botswana on Sunday,9th December in a final Group C game played at Shinde.
” The speed of play is what our team, Lesotho struggled with. We tried to play on transition in some games but we were still some paces behind. I think this is what we have learned that football is an intensity sport instead of endurance. We run for 90 minutes in all the games and we did not have cramps but still did not achieve anything, We still lost games when could run for 90 minutes. It’s important that we go home and improve from a young level on the speed of play,” he said.
His counter part Rapelang Raizor Tsatsilebe told the ZamFoot crew in an interview that he was happy with the improvement his team has made.
” Yes am happy because the last time we participated in such a tournament we did not have a point or score a goal. Now we have four points it shows that we have done something better. We will improve, I can say we had a positive tournament. It’s a motivation to my team and our country,” he said.
Botswana beat Lesotho by a lone goal to end in third place in group C with four points. There was a late twist after Mozambique were eliminated from the tournament after having thought they had qualified following the one draw with Zambia as the best second placed team.
However Angola came to the party in their final group C game beating Zimbabwe by four goals to one to peep Mozambique to a semi final spot on goal difference.
The semi finals will take place on Tuesday with Zimbabwe facing Zambia at 15:00hrs but before that defending champions South Africa will tackle Angola at 13:00hrs.
TUESDAY’S FIXTURES
Semifinals
13h00 (11h00 GMT): South Africa vs Angola – Nkana Stadium
15h30 (13h30 GMT): Zambia vs Zimbabwe – Nkana Stadium.
