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Mashaba pleased with options

Cape Town - An outstanding performance from South Africa in the 2-0 win over the Ivory Coast in the Nelson Mandela Challenge on Sunday has added depth to the Bafana Bafana squad, leaving coach Shakes Mashaba more than pleased.

Both countries fielded weakened starting XIs at the Mbombela Stadium, with a host of young players featuring for both sides, although it was South Africa who outplayed their more illustrious opponents, with Bongani Zungu and David Zulu netting the goals.

With Bafana's participation at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations in mind, Mashaba admits he has some selection headaches of the positive kind after several fringe players made a mark with excellent performances this weekend.

"It's good to keep the momentum of the team going," Mashaba said after the game, which fell outside of the FIFA calendar, meaning the various PSL clubs were not obliged to release their star players. "And also we brought in an almost new team, it was a good chance to give players the opportunity to prove themselves.

"There were a couple of boys who did very well. It could mean trying to get extra games than those that we had planned before going to (AFCON 2015 hosts) Equatorial Guinea, because there are some boys who deserve to be get the opportunity to go."

For Ivory Coast coach Herve Renard, who won the 2012 AFCON with Zambia, it was a case of admitting that his side had been totally outplayed by a hungry and determined home team.

"It was too fast for us today. The score is very good for us - the South African team was better than us everywhere.

"I think maybe we got two chances, it's not enough to expect something in football. It's a good result for young players, now we know that there is a lot of a job to do, congratulations to South Africa," he said.
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