Amakhosi midfielder Siphiwe Tshabalala played a starring role for Bafana Bafana when they defeated Zambia in the COSAFA Cup Final on Wednesday evening in Bloemfontein, even though he was played in a position that he is not accustomed to.

Playing in the Chiefs man was amongst the pick of the South African players, he also managed to convert his spot kick in the shoot out which gave South Africa a 3-2 advantage in the shoot out. Even though Zambia converted their fifth kick Teko Modise, scored Bafana’s final kick to hand South Africa a 4-3 victory in the shoot out.

The speedy midfielder, who earned his tenth international cap during Wednesday’s COSAFA Cup Final, is looking to build on this performance for both club and country over the coming months. He intends to use the boost of picking up his first winners' medal at international level to help Chiefs in the upcoming Telkom Cup quarterfinal against SuperSport United and hopes by the end of the year to have won a cup winners' medal for both club and country.

Sizzling performance

Siphiwe, who is accustomed to playing as a left winger, was used by Carlos Alberto Parreira as an attacking midfielder and was not played as far wide as he prefers to be stationed. But he reveled in his experimental role that “The coach told me that he was going to experiment using me in a more central position, and from my own assessment and getting feedback from the technical team, the over all feeling was that I was effective in doing the job the coach had tasked me with.”

Penalty dual

During the shoot out on Wednesday evening, Siphiwe was tasked with taking Bafana’s fourth kick, and with Zambia missing theirs, it was up to him to put South Africa in the driving seat by slotting his kick home. The challenge for the young Chiefs midfielder was that on the other end of the kick was his former Free State Stars colleague, Zambian keeper Kennedy Mweene, who made Tshabalala a bit nervous as Mweene and him had in the past practiced penalty drills on the training ground.

Siphiwe picks up the story “As I walked to take my kick, it was running through my mind that Kennedy knows how I take penalties. When I put the ball down, he kept on reminding me and was taunting me in a friendly way. At that point I knew that he was over confident so I opted to sell him a dummy which he bought and sent him the wrong way.”

After scoring his kick Siphiwe came up with his own dance to celebrate his spot kick success, while a clearly unimpressed Mweene looked on.