Now that Benni's gone, who's in the 18 area?

A striker, a goal scorer, a finisher, someone to put the ball in the back of the net, something that's been missing from South African football in recent years. South Africa's inability to score goals has not only seen the country crash out of major tournaments but has more recently also seen them fail to qualify for these tournaments.

South Africa's lack of a goal scorer upfront was most noticeable in this years African Cup of Nations, where the sides top goal scorer was central defender Siyabonga Sangweni, the defender scored two crucial goals, both coming in the group stage of the tournament, which helped Bafana qualify for the quater-finals, where again lack of finishing and poor decision making from their front men saw bafana knocked out by a Seydou Keita lead Mali.

Bafana's current group of strikers, Bernard Parker, Tokelo Rantie, Lehlohonolo Majoro and Dino Ndlovu, aren't known for being prolific goal scorers, however youngsters Rantie(22) and Ndlovu(23) have been in impressing form for their clubs recent times, and with only 13 Bafana caps between the two and long playing careers ahead of them, there's high hopes that they will be the ones to end bafana's goal scoring woes.

The countries failure to produce a quality frontmen has been evident in the Premier Soccer League, in the last 8 seasons the golden boot has been won by a foreign national 5 times (Collins Mbesuma, Chris Katongo, Knowledge Musona, Mame Niang and James Chamanga)!

The last quality striker to come through South Africa's ranks was Cape Town born Benedict "Benni" McCarthy, the centre-forward had stints at several European clubs, most notably FC Porto 

where under the guidance of Jose Mourinho, Benni became the First South African to lift the

UEFA Champions League. 'Benni' also picked up a golden boot award while at Porto and in

2006 the striker left Portugal to play in the Barclays Premier League for then Premier league team

Blackburn Rovers, in his first season for Rovers he scored a staggering 18 league goals

finishing as the second highest scorer in the league that season.

McCarthy has been capped 80 times for Bafana Bafana and is the national teams all time leading

goal scorer with 31 goals.Benni now 35 and heading for retirement, was arguably South Africa's best footballing export and will Undoubtedly go down as a Bafana legend.

So now that Benni's gone, who's gonna fill the void in the 18 area?  

This year Bafana Bafana have played 7 matches and scored a total of 7 goals, conceding only 4, (sounds good so far), however they failed to score in three of those matches, and only won two of the six encounters,drawing three and losing two.