Coach of the senior national team of South Africa Stuart Baxter insist his team despite failing to qualify for the World Cup are better than Nigeria and Senegal who are already through to the World Cup next year in Russia.
Baxter made this known shortly after his team suffered a 2-0 deficit in the hands of Senegal that ended their World Cup hopes and sealed Senegal’s spot to the mundial in Russia..
The coach said although Nigeria and Senegal can boast of better players, his team are not far off as they are only lacking in application of some basic ideas which robbed them of the chance of qualifying for the World Cup.
“My mandate was never about ‘qualify for the world cup or you go home’, I wanna make sure that we’re making progress. I’ve seen some of the performances that we need to move more quickly.
“We need to make progress. We need to have everyone’s backing in the country, including SAFA and that’s the only way we’ll get better”, he said shortly after their loss to Senegal.
“Maybe I’m blue-eyed but I don’t think this team [Senegal] or Nigeria are better than us. They may have the big names but with the right sort of application we can certainly move forward.”
Ade Emmanuel
