NamibiaSport

Tom Saintfiet

Brave Warriors coach Tom Saintfiet thanked his team for a great performance against Zimbabwe on Saturday, adding that Namibia must now start to prepare for the 2012 African Cup of Nations competition.



Brave Warriors coach Tom Saintfiet

Addressing the media at the NFA’s Soccer House, Saintfiet said he was confident that they could win the match.

“We can be proud of these players and how they performed. This is a very disciplined team. We already started working on our strategy during the Cosafa Cup competition and to me this result was totally no surprise and I was full of confidence that we could win,” he said.

Saintfiet however expressed disappointment in the result of the last Group 2 match between Guinea and Kenya, that Guinea won 3-2 on Sunday. This means that Guinea tops the group and qualifies for the next round of World Cup qualifiers while Kenya are second and could go through as one of the second best runners up, a position that could well have gone to Namibia, if circumstances had worked out right.

“If we beat Kenya in Nairobi we could now have been second in our group, but a lot of factors counted against us like the referee and the injury to Oliver Risser. I am disappointed, but we as Namibians don’t have to think that we cannot be there (at the World Cup) as a small country. It is an honor for the players and me to bring this victory to the nation,” he said.

Saintfiet thanked the NFA for their faith in him, saying that they had stood by him when he was still an unknown coach.

“It is an honour for me to be in the spotlight now. When I was appointed there were still stories on the internet that I had been sacked by my previous club in Finland, so for me the most important role was that of the NFA president John Muinjo and Barry Rukoro for giving me the chance. No one knew about me but they gave me the opportunity to work with these fantastic players and this fantastic staff and I am very thankful to them that they took this brave decision,” he said.

Saintfiet said they hoped to play a friendly match on the FIFA approved date for friendlies on November 19 and not on November 4, which was not approved by FIFA, since he would only be able to call up Namibia’s foreign based players for a friendly on a FIFA approved date. South Africa had earlier made contact about a possible friendly on November 4, but nothing has been finalised.

“We have to build something for the future now. I dnt just play friendly matches just to play a game – there must be a goal in each match. Our first goal now must be to build for the 2012 African Cup of Nations. We have to be there and from today we will start working towards that,” he said.

Saintfiet said he would keep his core group of players but added that he wanted to bring in new players to provide good alternatives.

“It is clear that this is the group that I will work with further but I have to look further and in the next friendly matches I will bring in some new players so that we can get alternative players for different positions. But we will do this step by step,” he said.

Meanwhile the technical director of the NFA, Klaus Stark said that he was working hard with the NFA to try and build up football structures and specifically youth leagues in Namibia.