SOUTH AFRICA CHAN TEAM 'BUNCH OF LOSER'- SPORT MINISTER

(BBC Sports)– South Africa has been tagged “a bunch of losers” by the country’s sports minister after they were eliminated in the group stage of the African Nations Championship.

The hosts of the tournament for home-based players lost 3-1 to Nigeria on Sunday to suffer a humiliating exit.

“What I saw was not a problem of coaching; it was a bunch of losers. That mediocrity that was displayed, we must never wake up to that again.” Fikile Mbalula told a news conference.

Bafana Bafana finished third in Group A, having lost to Nigeria, drawn with Mali and beaten only Mozambique.

Mbalula believes their failure to reach the knockout stage shows there are fundamental problems with the team.

“Their performance was not even lacklustre, it was useless. We must go back to the drawing board. We indeed have a crisis of monumental proportions. We don’t have a crisis of talent, we have a crisis of putting everything together.

I felt like just standing up and walking out (the stadium). I saw people lining up after the game to greet them, I won’t greet them, I didn’t even call them.

In Africa we have won nothing, we are the laughing stock. This generation of players we must forget,” he stated.

South Africa failed to qualify for this year’s World Cup in Brazil, and since 2008 they have only played at tournaments they have hosted, which include the 2010 World Cup.

“We aren’t going to this year’s World Cup. But Iran is going and yet there is no football there. We hosted the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013 and could not get to the final. We also hosted CHAN and ended up going out in the group stages.

If we were united we would have done our best and won CHAN by stopping the league for one month to concentrate on this,” added Mbalula.