Banyana coach Ellis says there’s much to learn from Japan defeat

Banyana Banyana head coach Dr Desiree Ellis says her side will take some lessons from their 5-0 defeat to Japan in the first of two international friendly matches.

South Africa conceded as early as the first minute through Kiko Seike who doubled the lead 18 minutes later. By half time it was 3-0 after Momoko Tanikawa had scored the third.

Aoba Fujino then grabbed a brace as Japana ran away 5-0 winners at the Yanmar Hanasaka Stadium on Saturday.

“You learn a lot more from defeats than what you learn from wins, this is part of our preparation. Japan was excellent today, pouncing on every mistake and scoring from every mistake and that is what top sides do. I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned as preparation for WAFCON, we created a few half chances and maybe better decisions in the final third could have gotten us in behind goal, but today we played against a top side,” Ellis told SAFA media.

“We wanted to be really compact in the first 20 minutes and made sure that we closed all the spaces, but unfortunately, we conceded early before we could settle down and then we couldn’t recover in time. We had analyzed and we knew what was going to happen, but we put ourselves under pressure when we tried to hold on to the ball. There were moments when we got out and played, but it was not often enough because of the pressure that the Japanese players put on our players and at times, they were clinical on the mistakes they pounced on.”

Banyana Banyana and Japan meet again on Tuesday in the second and final friendly at the same venue. Kick-off is at 8.30am South African time.

The 2022 African Champions are using the two matches as part of the preparations for next month’s CAF Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON 2026) which will be held in Morocco from 25 July to 17 August.