Mark Williams hopes Broos has plan B for strikers at Afcon

The strikers are an area of much concern for Bafana Bafana at the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Ivory Coast, where they will open their group E account against Mali at Amadou Gon Coulibaly Stadium in Korhogo on Tuesday.

The same concern was shared by Mark Williams, Bafana’s two-goal hero in the 1996 Afcon final in which SA beat Tunisia 2-0 at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg to win the trophy for the first and only time in what was Bafana’s inaugural appearance.

Speaking at Bafana’s send-off at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on Thursday, Williams said he wonders where Bafana’s goal will come from in Hugo Broos’s squad that will be minus Lebo Mothiba and Lyle Foster.  

Broos has Orlando Pirates pair Evidence Makgopa and Zakhele Lepasa, and Mihlali Mayambela, Percy Tau, Thapelo Maseko and Oswin Appollis as players he will look to get goals when they take on Mali on Tuesday, Namibia on January 21 and Tunisia on January 24. 

Williams, who finished with four Afcon goals in Clive Barker’s 1996 cup-winning team, is hoping Broos’s team will be able to produce enough goals to progress to the second round. 

“We’ve always been lacking in scoring goals and that’s a big part in tournaments. When you play, you need to have a guy who’s going to score goals on a regular basis, and if we can get that department right Bafana will be a threat to every team they play,” said Williams, who had the late Philemon Masinga and Shaun Bartlett among the strikers he was competing with for the jersey in the 1996 squad.  

Williams added that the problem of scoring goals does not start at Bafana but he has seen it in the Premier Soccer League (PSL), where strikers are failing to finish a season with double figures.

“It happens [a lot] in the PSL as well. You can’t have a top scorer with seven goals. It’s an embarrassment. It’s almost 50% of the games that have been played [this season] and somebody [Khanyisa Mayo, Bradley Grobler and Lucas Ribeiro] has got seven goals. At this time I would have had 15 or 20 goals and I will be fighting hard to get the top goalscorer [award].

“It’s [lack of goals] just been going backwards and backwards and you can see that 95% of coaches in every game they say ‘we played great football’ but coming to the last third they’re not scoring. 

“Why are we [former players] here? I’ve put myself up there and I’ve done it with SuperSport [United] as a striker’s coach. It’s [scoring goals] something that you’re born with, but you need to give it over to other players and sometimes it helps the team.

“The game has changed and you need to have different departments’ coaches and unfortunately we don’t have coaches in the striking department and that’s what 95% of the teams are lacking in the PSL. Football is all about scoring goals and you get a result.”

Williams admitted that having a striker such as Foster could have helped Bafana at Afcon because he would have offered Broos’s team a different dimension in how they attack their opponents.

While Mothiba will miss the finals because of injury, Foster has been battling with mental health. Though he’s been back playing for his Premier League outfit Burnley in recent weeks, he and his club coach Vincent Kompany said he was not ready to be with Bafana at Afcon.

“He [Foster] is a guy on form and that is a big miss because you need strikers that can score goals and are confident. Even when they [Bafana] were playing [a training match against Lesotho on Wednesday] they couldn’t find the back of the net and that is not a good thing.

“Sometimes you need a target man, and he could have been that. I hope the coach has a plan B because if we got all the players running away it becomes difficult because you get the ball and you’re looking for a striker and he’s running off. You need one to sit back and that’s not what we have.”