Senegal’s remarkable triumph at the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Cameroon challenges us to ask what’s stopping our Bafana Bafana from achieving such feats.

It’s not an easy question to deal with, but we can certainly steal a thing or two from the Senegalese, who have waited for 60 years to be officially crowned as the No. 1 team in Africa.

For a close to 40 months Senegal have been the top-ranked side in Africa and part of their success has been realised through the trust they’ve shown their coach Aliou Cisse, 45, who has been in charge since 2015. Cisse was the skipper of the Senegalese squad which caught the world’s eye at the 2002 Fifa World Cup in South Korea/Japan, where they were unlucky to be eliminated 1-0 by Turkey in the quarterfinals in what was their maiden appearance at the global showpiece...