Banyana Banyana head coach Desiree Ellis was pleased with the performance of her squad and how they managed to control the match over Algeria.
South Africa secured an important victory after they edged Algeria 2-0 in the final round first leg of the African Women Cup of Nations qualifier at Orlando stadium on Friday afternoon.
Ellis says that overall she was pleased, but the team could have done even better – and admitted they still need to work on finishing.
“We analysed them, but we felt that they were going to sit away from home to try not to concede, and we worked a lot on playing against a low block in training,” Ellis said after the match.
“We switched off right at the beginning, and they could have taken the lead, but for most of the game, we were in control. We created many opportunities, but I felt we played at their pace, and we had to tell our players to speed the game up and retain the ball quicker.
“And then they started putting a lot of players in the middle, and we tried to be set to go wide, which we did and through that created opportunities didn’t come, we didn’t have more energy in the midfield, we brought on Thalea (Smidt) who gave us a lot of energy, Nomvula (Kgoale) gave us energy as well. And then Gabriela (Salgado), and I think that also changes a bit.
“Most definitely a little more composure in the box, going in and having space and not using that space to get a better angle and then shooting straight at the keeper. We’ve always said that is our Achilles heel, and we thought that we’ve worked on that, and we have to continue working on it because we know the heartache of not taking chances and at times, it looks similar.
“But we have to make sure that we work on finishing, make sure that we put the chances away that we get because the tie could have been over if we had taken our chances, and we would expect the players to get into that position to score. They just need to learn a bit more composure, and then try to score more goals, but I thought defensively we were perfect.
“There were not threatening us, when we’re watching the game with the players, you also don’t want them to look at the game in a way that the game will be easy. You got to make sure that you keep them focused and make sure that you tell them that there’s a game. We hoped that they were going to open up which they did not, we also prepared and played as I said for the low block.
“We sometimes played through the low block, but they didn’t look threatening at all. And we didn’t take advantage of those moments. I mean, rotating the ball quicker, which we didn’t do. At times when we did we open them up and then got chances, and we need to be more clinical in front of goal because this could have been so different.”
Banyana will have to prepare for the return leg which will be played in Algeria next week, Wednesday.
