Pitso keen to see Sirino at Bafana
"I would love to see him play for South Africa," says Mosimane.
Gaston Sirino of Mamelodi Sundowns celebrates scoring a goal with coach Pitso Mosimane. (Photo by Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images)
If it were up to Mamelodi Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane, Gaston Sirino would be donning the Bafana Bafana jersey since the Uruguayan-born star has not turned out for La Celeste and if he takes up South African citizenship – something Mosimane is encouraging – he will be available for Bafana coach Molefi Ntseki’s consideration.
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“I would love to see him play for South Africa, why not? Because he is probably not going to take Luis Suarez out of the (Uruguayan) national team so he can help us. We have seen the whole French national team is full of African players because of French colonisation,” said Mosimane.
“We should probably also look at the nationalities of children who are born here, maybe we should look at it differently and see what we can get from that. But those African children who are born in Europe go through proper structures. If we fix the youth structures we will benefit like the other countries that have benefited,” said Mosimane.
While the thought of the talented Sirino playing for Bafana is exciting, his discipline, or lack thereof, remains a big concern. Mosimane believes that the league’s prosecutor Nande Becker is on a witchhunt to suspend Sirino. This dates back to when Sirino blew a fuse in a Tshwane derby and Becker slapped him with two charges of assault.
“For me it is good to discipline but don’t forget to have the proper players playing on the pitch because it is a good league and a good race for the league. You might kill it early because you made a decision to overrule what the referee said on the pitch.
“The referee made a decision on the pitch, he got punished so I don’t know if you want to punish him twice and I don’t know if that has ever happened in football. You can’t punish him twice. He probably feels the referee was not strong enough.
“Sirino did not hit Dean Furman, it was a push and if you want to make decisions based on pushes, did you see the last Soweto derby and how many pushes there were there? That means they’ll ban everybody. Pushing is there and it will always happen. I saw Samir Nurkovic kicking a player from behind, should they go to Nurkovic and ban him?”
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