Pitso Mosimane is irrepressible. Literally. He celebrates each goal scored as if the South African Football Association threatened to fire him should the national team lose that match. And he isn’t letting Paulo Duarte’s sour grapes put him down. The Burkina Faso coach is alleging that Safa sabotaged his side to skew the result of Wednesday’s friendly match in Bafana’s favour (Bafana beat Burkina Faso 3 – 0). According to Duarte, Safa messed up some of the player visas, meaning that most of his best players weren’t available.

“We were superior so don’t buy that excuse of Safa not being organised,” retorted Mosimane. “They also had 60% of the players from the last three matches so it wasn’t a weak squad, we could also say the same because we were missing the likes of Steven Pienaar, Yeye Letsholonyane, Davide Somma and others.”

According to Duarte, this match was a clever ploy by Safa to raise Bafana Bafana up in the Fifa and Confederation of African Football (Caf) rankings to put them on a better footing for the Fifa 2014 qualifying matches. Seeding for the 2014 World Cup qualifiers will apparently be done on a ranking basis, though this hasn’t been officially decided yet.

In Safa’s defence, visa arrangements were the Burkinabe’s responsibility. Plus, they reportedly paid Burkina Faso a R500,000 appearance fee. And really, Duarte could have said no to the invitation. DM

Read more:

• Duarte slam Safa in KickOff;
• Burkina Faso coach slams Safa in IOL Sports.

Photo: Reuters.