Banyana Banyana progress to knockout stages

Alfred Nzo independent sports journalist Ovayo Mdingi reacts on the Banyana Banyana group stages performance in the on going World Cup tournament.

First Game was a game of mistakes especially to our players, from the start we struggled to get to gear 1 becouse we were sitting back against Sweden. Yes, they are ranked number 3 in the world and they are ruthless and have a lot of quality players in their team but even us we had a chance. At some point we will need to play to our strength, we have technical ability, skill, and speed. Now if we can play like that when we have the ball and move it quick and get to spaces we would have troubles Sweden as thy are tall nd dnt have speed. They gave us problems with their aerial presence and that’s how we lost it because we could not deal with their aerial balls.

Argentina
We controlled ourselves better but even in that game we failed to take care of the ball nd we were punished through we lead by two zero the injury to Fifi destabilized our midfield then Kolosa came in we got balance again she got yellow card nd Final warning the we were forced to sub her Makhubela came in with Holweni we went back to be under pressure lost so many balls lost duels in the middle that were won by Biyana nd thy over powerd our defence nd we conceded from that.

Italy
We came with changes that were forced by both injury and cautions from both Fifi and Biyana. When they introduced Noko and pushed Gamede to the midfield and introduced Moodly, we started so low as usual and we kicked the ball to them. I think we wanted to play on the second phase but again we did not have number to do so and also lost so many balls in that we conceded a goals because we did not take care of second ball.  Look when that cross that ended being a penalty was our ball and we lost it and we were so tactically disorganized. We could not deal with the first balls and Dlamini was out of position also before marking was not even aware where she is.. Again we conceded from the same mistake but fine we got an equalizer through own goal and we came back second half with Kgaele in the place of Moodly.  We tried to balance with her and Gamede and Linda in front of them and we won duels there both on the ground and in the air and we got second goal and quickly we went to sleep we conceded a corner.. remember aerial balls are our pressing issue in this world cup and again we conceded through that for the third time in 3 games.. We kept pushing fortunately we got a third goal through great combination play from Jamaine and Hilda to Tembi the we scored and we were under pressure from then.

The reason why we struggled is that we gave we always lose the ball to the team we play againts in most games at this World Cup.