GALLERY: The country’s u-12 boys and girls ready to fly to Spain
The world finals scheduled for Barcelona will start on October 10.
SOUTH Africa will make history later this year by sending an u-12 girls’ soccer team to compete in the Danone Nations Cup world finals, where they will be pitting their strength against seven other nations.
The team that will represent the country is a group of players from an informal settlement of Ivory Park, Gauteng.
They earned this opportunity by winning the Danone Nations Cup girls tournament which recently took place at Reiger Park.
They will be accompanied by the boys from Muzuvukile Primary School of Enseleni, a rural area near Richards Bay, KwaZulu-Natal, who won the boys’ national finals at the same venue.
The world finals, scheduled for Barcelona, will start on October 10.
On the final day of the world finals, all the matches will take place at the RCDE Stadium, home ground of La Liga club, RCD Espanyol de Barcelona.
A girl’s tournament was introduced for the first time this year but because most schools do not have girls-only teams, it was a pilot tournament in Gauteng only, with 40 schools participating.
There were regional finals, and eight schools went through to the provincial playoffs. The teams that reached the semi-finals were then invited to compete at the national finals.
Rebonwe met Michael Mkhwanazi Primary in the final. They had played each other earlier in the day. Michael Mkhwanazi won the closely contested match 2-1.
Rebonwe knew that they were in for a tough game in the final and gave it everything from the beginning.
This time they were better prepared and created many scoring opportunities. They were first to score, but Michael Mkhwanazi equalised within minutes.
Rebonwe had the better of the exchanges from then on and came close to scoring right at the end of the game. It ended in a draw. However, the game went to a penalty shootout which Rebonwe won, to add the national title to their provincial title.
At the same time, the nine boys’ provincial champions competed in the playoffs for their national title. The teams were divided into two groups with the teams that topped the log meeting in the final.
Muzuvukile was always going to be the team to beat based on their exceptional performance in the provincial finals.
They are a strong team and three of their players have been invited to attend trials at Mamelodi Sundowns. They won all their league games to finish top of their pool and met Group B winners Patekile from the Eastern Cape in the finals.
Muzuvukile were the only team that won all their matches leading up to the final and the final was very much like the group stages.
With a couple of minutes left in the match, just as the spectators started to think that they would have another penalty shootout, Siyanda Masinga from Muzuvukile got the ball past Alethu to give Muzuvukile the lead. They had a few more chances to add to their lead but Alethu stopped them scoring and they ran out 1-0 winners.
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