Bafana Bafana head coach Molefi Ntseki has taken full responsibility for his side’s failure to qualify for the 2021 AFCON tournament by admitting “I have failed as a coach”

Bafana Bafana’s Molefi Ntseki on Monday took full responsibility for his side’s failure to qualify for the 2021 Afcon tournament by admitting to falling short in his abilities as head coach.
Bafana suffered a 2-0 defeat away to Sudan to fail to qualify for next year’s tournament to be hosted in Cameroon after finishing a disappointing third in Group C.
This is the fifth time since Tunisia 1994 that the senior men’s national side have failed to qualify for an Afcon after they also missed out on the 2010, 2012 and 2017 editions of the continental showpiece.
A dejected Ntseki took the blame for his side’s failures post-match admitting that full responsibility should rest with him after failing to clinch qualification.
“As a head coach of Bafana I came up with a turnaround strategy and everything started very well and we just needed a point to qualify,” Ntseki said.
“Yes, as a coach, the head of the selection committee, my disappointment is huge for my personal growth and achievements.
“The success of the team is my success and the failure of the team firstly starts with me to say I have failed as a coach.
“In football we need to own up. When there’s success you become everybody’s favourite, but when there’s failure you become an orphan and everyone is looking at you.
“Things like this do happen in football and we own up and we need to be very strong. I wanted the team playing in the Afcon, but it’s a big disappointment from my side.”
Ntseki also added how the affects of Covid-19 impacted his team who were without a number of regular first-team players with a high number also succumbing to injury.
“We need to be very honest with ourselves in terms of the challenges we came up against ahead of the Ghana and Sudan matches.
“We could not get our regular players because of Covid-19 and the players we brought in who did very well against Ghana were excused because of injury.
“We had to start afresh with new playing personnel. It is just unfortunate that we are talking about a team that was almost about to qualify,” Ntseki added.