SA football winds down, looks ahead
And so, another year in South African football is nearly over, with just a smattering of Absa Premiership matches and continental club clashes left to play, before we can all take a brief festive break.
Denis Onyango, Hlompho Kekana of Mamelodi Sundowns and Leonardo Castro of Kaizer Chiefs during the Absa Premiership match between Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns at FNB Stadium. (Photo by Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images)
Brief is the operative word here, because the Absa Premiership is back after the final fixture of 2018 between Highlands Park and SuperSport United on Sunday, just four days into 2019, with one of the games a decent-looking meeting between Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns. The Africa Cup of Nations being moved to June has enabled this hasty return, though at the moment we don’t know who is hosting the 2019 event.
The Confederation of African Football are expected to announce the new hosts on January 9, after stripping Cameroon of the event, with South Africa seemingly in a straight shoot-out with Egypt for the rights to take over. Stuart Baxter and Bafana Bafana will no doubt have a keener eye than most on that date, because if South Africa do get the competition, Bafana should qualify for Afcon 2019 automatically as hosts.
As it stands, of course, Baxter’s Bafana need at least a point from their final qualifier against Libya, on neutral territory because of the civil war in Libya, to qualify for Afcon 2019, after another year of rather limited success for the South African men’s national team.
Baxter’s side are unbeaten in qualifying, but that statistic needs to be qualified quite severely by the fact that they have drawn at home to Libya, and in the Seychelles.
Bafana could really do with beating Libya in March, or at the very least getting a point, regardless of the host country decision. Imagine, just for a second, that Bafana do qualify as hosts of Afcon 2019, but then lose to Libya, giving the joke about Bafana only qualifying for tournaments that they host another punchline.
It was left to Banyana Banyana to raise the South African flag with pride in 2018, but completing qualification for a tournament, and a World Cup finals at that, with a superb performance at the 2018 Caf Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in Ghana. Banyana can now look forward to a trip to France in next year’s European summer, to take on the world, something the men’s team have not managed to do since they played in Japan and South Korea some 16 years ago.
For now, it remains to be seen if Bafana will be watching the women on television from the comfort of their own lounges, or participating in an Africa Cup of Nations, on home soil or on foreign shores.
One really hopes that either way, Bafana are playing in an Africa Cup of Nations that they have genuinely qualified for.
On the Premier Soccer League front, 2018 was a year of familiarity, with Mamelodi Sundowns once again winning the league, and of surprises, with Free State Stars capturing the Nedbank Cup and just recently Baroka FC bringing home the Telkom Knockout. Hopefully 2019 will be equally thrilling with a brilliant race for the 2018/19 Absa Premiership certainly looking on the cards.
Just a final note to say that this is the last Phakaaathi supplement of 2018, but don’t worry, we’ll be right back in 2019, returning on January 8 with all your latest football news and features! Look out, too, for the final Phakaaathi Plus of 2018, in this Friday’s edition of The Citizen newspaper.
In the meantime, don’t forget to also join Phakaaathi’s Private Fantasy League, for a chance to win fantastic monthly prizes. For more information on that, turn to Page 7 of today’s Phakaaathi.
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