22 October 2018 – South Africa’s National Under-17 Women’s squad (Bantwana) Coach Simphiwe Dludlu has brought in South Africa’s National Under-20 Men’s team (Amajita) coach Thabo Senong to assist Bantwana during the prestigious 2018 FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup, which takes place in Uruguay from 13 November to 1 December this year.
Dludlu believes that the experienced Senong can add value to her technical staff following his 2017 FIFA Under-20 Men’s World Cup participation which was held in South Korea. Although Amajita did not make it past the group stages, Dludlu reckons that many lessons were learnt there by Senong, which will in turn be beneficial to her side.
The upcoming World Cup will be Bantwana’s second appearance having participated in the Trinidad and Tobago edition back in 2010.
“We have appointed Coach Thabo Senong as our Technical Director for the World Cup because we believe that we can learn from his previous experience,” Dludlu said. “He is a well decorated coach who has passion for youth development”
“He has already joined our camp and has added a lot of value in the few training sessions we have had so far. We, as the technical staff, are very happy to have him here because he brings with him an opinion of experience.”
Dludlu will be assisted by South Africa’s National Under-20 Women’s team (Basetsana) head coach Maud Khumalo. The Bantwana coach added that Khumalo was another great football mind to work with in her technical staff as well.
“We are fortunate to have great minds of both coach Khumalo and Senong in the squad,” Dludlu said. “We have a good working relationship and believe that we can reach our targets in Uruguay. I believe that Khumalo and I complement each other very well because I am her assistant at Under-20 and she is my assistant at Under-17.
“Coach Thabo has been a mentor to me,” Dludlu added. “With that said, I believe we have a very strong technical team going to this year’s World Cup”.