PAPIC, THE HONEYMOON IS OVER

My dearest readers ... My friend, South Africa’s Sunday Times Sports Editor Bareng-Batho-Kortjaas (BBK) calls it the ‘circus’ competition. That is the African National Championships, founded in 2009, only featuring home-based players.

 The creation of the African Nations Championship was a response to the desire to revive or strengthen national competitions regularly weakened by a mass exodus of top players who leave their home countries to play for foreign teams, which will pay more and get them more media coverage.

For countries like South Africa, as BBK is wont to say, this might be a circus competition because it is in the truest sense the poor man’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) but for us, this is a tournament we appreciate so much as a platform for blooding youngsters and building a team for the future.
That’s why we get our fix in this tournament even though in the bigger scheme of things, it is not something to brag about.

It is that belief this State-of-the-Nation-Sports-Address (SONSA) want to bring to our national team Sihlangu coach, Kostadin Papic’s attention that the clash against the ‘Sable Antelopes’ of Angola cannot be underestimated. Sihlangu face the Palancas Negras at Mavuso Sports Centre in the first leg of the first round on July 28 before travelling to Luanda for the second leg on August 3.

squeezed

After another early exit in the COSAFA Cup almost two months ago, we can all hope Papic realises he is yet to win an official game in charge of the national team, having only squeezed to the next round at the expense of Malawi’s Flames on an away-goal rule. If truth be told, Sihlangu failed to qualify for the COSAFA Cup quarter-finals in a relatively easy group of islanders, Comoros and Mauritius.

Both countries are renowned for being excellent holiday destinations rather than their football prowess. Their squads are a concoction of pastry chefs, air-conditioners fixers and hostel staffers!
But we failed to beat them and in the end, we were back home with our tails neatly tucked between our legs.

Sympathisers, Yours Truly included, pointed to the inventive, well co-ordinated play and sense of direction in Sihlangu’s play as some of the positives.
We are now playing on the front foot which suits our players. Papic has instilled some traces of confidence in the players and we can all agree it is work in progress. But now it is time to keep the team growing by creating a platform that; in the near future, the team can play to its true potential.

opportunity

The CHAN tournament presents that opportunity, especially as 98% of Sihlangu is made of locally-based players. The so-called internationals we have scratch their gonads while warming up the benches at their foreign teams.

The CHAN tournament is a perfect platform, therefore, for Papic to build a team that can compete in the Africa Cup of Nations 2021 and the World Cup 2022 qualifiers. One thing that Papic and everybody associated with the national team needs to be cognisant of, is that the national team is not a developmental team. People care about a winning team, they support it. People will rally behind a team that produces good results.

unbundling

That’s why it is important that Papic, while unbundling the crossed wires that is Sihlangu, and find a cure to the malaise that has eaten the fibre of Eswatini football for far too long, he also gets good results. I don’t want to believe in the myopic ideas being thrown around that the national team was bewitched and all that gibberish. Papic and his boys need to deliver.

They need victory at home on July 28 as an astronaut needs Oxygen. It is time to overcome the tag of being ‘nearly men’, and deliver good results. Over to you, “Mr. Bill Clinton’ ... basically the honeymoon is OVER!

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