Baxter admits Bafana misfire
Stuart Baxter admitted that Bafana Bafana failed to produce the goods in attack on Monday afternoon as they went down 1-0 to the Ivory Coast in their 2019 Africa Cup of Nations Group D opener at the Al Salam Stadium in Cairo.
Stuart Baxter, coach of South Africa (Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix)
The Bafana coach praised his side’s overall performance, but admitted they could not argue with the result given their lack of threat to the Elephants’ goal.“Because of the lack of strikes we can’t complain about losing, but I thought the players put in a good performance, and it was a great learning curve,” said Baxter.
“What didn’t work for us in the beginning was that when you are playing a physically strong team, you need to take the opportunity to make rapid transitions” he added.
“We didn’t get the ball moving into the spaces we had said we wanted to, our movement and combination play is quite good and that is what was going to give us goal chances. We didn’t translate good possession
into goal chances so we can’t be completely satisfied but we showed enough that we can take points from the group.”Bafana next play Namibia on Friday at the same stadium, and Baxter also admitted that whoever loses that game will probably be gone from the competition.“I think if either team loses that game we can say goodbye,” said the Bafana coach.
into goal chances so we can’t be completely satisfied but we showed enough that we can take points from the group.”Bafana next play Namibia on Friday at the same stadium, and Baxter also admitted that whoever loses that game will probably be gone from the competition.“I think if either team loses that game we can say goodbye,” said the Bafana coach.
“We know the importance of that game.”
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