Amajita head coach Raymond Mdaka says it’s a bitter pill to swallow to exit the U20 FIFA World Cup at the last-16 stage of the competition.
The African Champions came into the global event brimming with confidence, but started with an unfortunate 2-1 loss to France, in which they were created plenty of chances to win the game.
It was followed up with a 5-0 win over New Caledonia and a 2-1 triumph over one of the tournament favourites, United States of America, to finish second in the group and book their place against the South American nation.
However, they fell to a 3-1 loss on Wednesday evening, in a match where the Colombians were tactically and physically superior on the night.
“It was a hard pill to swallow, especially if you have a team you believe can bring results, sometimes when you’re used to winning, when you lose, it goes deep within you, but other than that we understand it’s the nature of football and the knockout stage,” Mdaka said.
“You play, you don’t win, you’re out – but even before one can talk about the match, it’s an experience to the boys – they have learnt, an experience for the techncial team, everyone who was here at this stage of the World Cup.
“We were caught out in the first few minutes where we couldn’t build up as we normally used to and in the heat of the moment, we tried by all means to vary the build up, but it was late for us and were caught up with that goal from the blind side.
“We accepted that, settled and then missed several chances… got a goal through the penalty, and we felt the stage is still open, we can play, then we conceded the second, the last goal – not much to say, but Colombia did their homework about us. We knew how they play and felt we could exploit the spaces on the sides, the moment they invert full-backs.
“But they pressed us high and made sure we didn’t get passing lanes in the middle, which frustrated our play a bit and when time was running, we end up with this kind of result, but realistic, it’s football, we have to learn, that’s how far we went in the tournament and the boys heads are held up – let’s see what happens going forward.
“It’s been a good run, starting our first preparations, the tournaments we played and also here, we tried to show what we can give as a country, how much we can do in football and even in the group stage, the character was there…”
