14 October 2024 – South African Football Association (SAFA) President Dr Danny Jordaan has applauded the SA Boys and Girls teams after they both won their respective competitions at the CAF African Schools Football Championship COSAFA Qualifier in Walvis Bay, Namibia, on Sunday.
The Boys beat Zambia 4-2 on penalties after playing to a 1-1 draw in regulation time, while the Girls came from behind to triumph over Malawi in a 3-1 win.
Dr Jordaan, who is in Congo Brazzaville with Bafana Bafana ahead of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against the Central African country on Tuesday, said the continued success of the two teams is central to the future of women’s and men’s football.
“It was pleasing, and it was a wonderful outcome of the school’s competition. Schools remain the basic basis of all of our teams, we start there in the schools,” Dr Jordaan said. “After CAF, together with President Dr Patrice Motsepe, launched the CAF African schools’ competition, South Africa went on to win perennial tournaments. We are now again the defending champions as we go to this competition. In Zanzibar we defeated Morocco in the final and our boys lost in the semifinals, but they qualified for AFCON. Now they come back from Namibia, both teams, the boys and girls are again Cosafa champions and have qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations for schools. It is just a wonderful achievement for the country, and is confirmation that when we started revision 2020, we had to consolidate schools.
“The problem in the past was that we did not have a unified school structure because you have the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, the Department of Basic Education and then SAFA. Fortunately, that has now been resolved and the three parties are working well together, and we have an agreement. The result of that is the success from Namibia where the Girls team cleaned every single team. The Boys also won every match.”
Dr Jordaan said plans are underway to ensure that the junior national teams remain active, regular opposition is found for them, and they have greater proximity to Bafana Bafana.
