The national U20 team was forced to come back from 2-0 down to win by 3-2. Mandla, who was the only representative from Kaizer Chiefs in the tournament, was brought down inside the box with three minutes left on the clock. George Maluleke made no mistake from the spot sending Amajita to a memorable victory.

“Teamwork was our key to our success in this tournament,” the Mpumalanga midfielder responded when asked about the Sunday victory against their counterparts from Mozambique.

“We started slowly allowing our opponents to score two goals. We started playing well after that...we did not want to lose at home. It would have been a disaster. We started playing our normal game and created chances as we showed more urgency in our game. Like I have said before, we have a good team and we proved once again that we can really play well together,” he said.

Mandla believes that the Cosafa Cup gave the technical team an opportunity to polish areas of concern ahead of African Youth Championships in January 2009.

“This tournament was a dress rehearsal for the big one in January. There is no doubt that the coaches used it to identify areas that we need to improve on and work on certain combinations,” he added.