Following the South African U20 national team's remarkable showing at the Cosafa Championship where they won 2-0 in the final against Zambia, it has been explained why the likes of Orlando Pirates star Relebohile Mofokeng and others in the same age group were not considered for selection.
Amajita have been dominant throughout the competition as they scored several goals while being stingy in giving away goals in their quest to qualify for the 2025 U20 Africa Cup of Nations.
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Mofokeng, who is still 19 despite his growing list of achievements at Pirates, has been fast-tracked to the senior national team instead, and SA U20 coach Raymond Mdaka has explained why.
"For that one, when we started preparing, we said we needed players that would qualify to play in the COSAFA qualifiers. You must remember that we are talking about the U20s here and therefore we needed to plan around players who would qualify when we play COSAFA and AFCON with those players still qualifying to be there. By that, it makes for good progression. Yes, we do have people who believe that some of the players qualify to be with us but they aren't, based on what I have explained to you," said Mdaka, speaking exclusively to the Siya crew.
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"Secondly, there are no specifics to say this one plays in the PSL, and this one doesn't, and what we do as the technical team is to try by all means to monitor all the players. We do a lot of things although we need to accept that it is the national team and by that, I mean we talk of South Africa as a whole. Chances are there might be some players who we might have not seen but if we make it a process then it makes it easy," the coach said.
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