An average player in the right system that maximize his talents can suddenly look like a world class and the best player put in a wrong system can easily turn into an amateur because will be playing against his own nature and that’s exactly what we saw against Mexico in the opening game. When you are leading players especially with most of them coming from club where they are used to high caliber coaching with every tactical plan delivered with clarity and geometric precision and all of a sudden you are forced to improvise on a vague theme, it’s always going to backfire and leaving players questioning themselves and draining their confidence and that’s what happened.

TACTICS MADE Simple touched and covered almost everything and I must appreciate his meticulous-attention to details as he was breaking down the details of the game. Listen, we know that we are not World beaters or a team full of world class talents but we do have good players blessed with individual brilliance to collectively help us beat even more superior opponents when played to their strengths and to be honest, the noise that you hear about Yesterday’s loss to Mexico, it’s not necessarily about the loss about how the team lost without being given a proper chance to lose with dignity. Scouts across Europe were watching the game looking for a player in a certain position at their clubs and there’s no doubt that none South African player impressed scouts because they didn’t see any thing to write about and that’s sad.

TOWERING FRONT MAN BAFANA’S NUMBER ONE ANY DAY!!

I’m probably the best person to describe and explain the type of a striker Evidence Makgopa is and what he brings to the team and my biggest description of him is that he’s not prolific like strikers like Iqram Rayners but his ability to pull wide and drop off to allow runners to get in behind especially in counter attacking game, he’s by far the best centrefowrd to lead the line for national team and it can be very disappointing when he’s consistently ignored and later come into the game to prove why he was supposed to start in the first place.

After coming on against Mexico, he won three aerial ball flicking them on in behind looking for runners but unfortunately it was to late and complecated because we were already inferior numerically due to red cards and couldn’t have speedy wingers to complement his strengths. This is the boy blessed with a big heart, Big match temperament and always playing in the best interests of the collective as he constantly make runs in relation to the movements of his teammates in the final third but he’s left on the bench until it’s too late. I still have respect for coach Hugo Broos and the transformation that he brought to the national team since he took over and it would be foolish of me to start talking as if he’s never done anything good for our national but the reality is against Mexico, he made us play in such a way that it did not maximize our strengths but rather minimize it and that’s why our players were playing against themselves.

If you remember how Pirates reached the semifinals of the Caf champions league, Jose Riveiro was mostly playing with a back three but it was a 3-4-2-1 suited perfectly for quick offensive transitions with Makgopa leading the line expertly as he allowed Mohau Nkota and Relebohile Mofokeng to run in behind as drops off and pull wide and in the set up of Bafana Bafana against Mexico, Makgopa would have done far better with Oswin Appollis, Tshepang Moremi or Kamogelo Sebelebele as inverted wingers who will use their devastating speed to exploit the space behind Mexico defence as we saw what happened when Khuliso Mudau forced Montes into a red and just imagine how moments like that we could’ve had in the game even when playing with three centrebacks that he deployed