We have quality players but when it comes to striking department in South African football we are very poor at producing the best strikers that can remain consistent for a long period of time.
South African strikers can't even score 15 league goals a season yet we still regard our league as one of the best in Africa. Shakes Mashaba, South African national football coach said that he wished he had the the quality of Khama Billiat in his team to help them score goals because scoring is the main challenge we are currently facing as the nation and we must remember that you cant win games if you don't score goals so to my question, where is Kermit Erasmus in our national team?
Shakes Mashaba has said that: "we are really looking forward to qualifying with the team we are setting up, but we have one problem; how are we going to sort out the scoring problem"? Mashaba told reporters after the match against Mauritania on the 2nd of September 2016. "All the top strikers in the league are forein. If I can have a player like (Khama Billiat), then maybe we'd score more, but by the way the boys are playing, I don't doubt we'll qualify for world cup" he added.
Many believe that there is conflict between Kermit Erasmus and Shakes Mashaba so that is why Kermit is not an option for Shakes Mashaba. Like it or not Kermit Erasmus is better than Gabuza and Ranti, which are two main strikers of the national team although they are not playing in their clubs. Our two national main strikers are bench warmers in their teams yet we expect them to score and remain consistant at top level which is highly impossible because they don't have match fitness.
Kermit once said that he is not a back up player when he was called by Shakes Mashaba to replace tokelo Ranti when he was inujred. Kermit Erasmus took to twitter to express: "Am not a back up player. The tweet was because I heard through a close friend that the national team was looking for me and at that time I was on the real high, where I felt that I should be part of the initial squad, Erasmus told Kickoff magazine latest issue.
"To hear that am being called up because the player didn't pitch up for whatever reason, I just felt that at that moment, am not a back-up player" said Erasmus. " you work so hard and put in more effort just to improve yourself as a player and that's how you threated"? After that incident we never heard Shakes Mashaba talking about Erasmus and that is where many suspect that the confict between Erasmus and Shakes begun.
Please Shakes pride aside at this point of time, in order to qualify for the world cup in Russia 2018, we need this man and you know that. He can be your Khama Billiat once you show him that you trust him.
