Headache for Ellis as Banyana prepare for Nigerian deja vu again

It is the case of dejavu for Banyana Banyana, with the senior national women’s team once again finding themselves having to play Nigeria in the Caf Africa Women’s Cup of Nations to be played in Morocco in July.

Banyana have been drawn against the Nigerians, Burundi and Botswana in Group C of the tournament. 

During the last edition of the competition in 2018, Banyana and Nigeria met in the group stages, with the South Africans winning the tie 1-0 but, the two teams met again in the final, where Banyana ended up on the losing side via penalties 4-3 after the game ended goalless.

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Banyana head coach Desiree Ellis is, however happy with the draw which was conducted last week, but says the team will have to prepare throughly for the games. 

“We have all been looking forward to the draw and now that it finally happened. While the draw was happening I had a funny feeling that we are going to end up in the same group as Nigeria.

We are in Group C along with Nigeria, Botswana and Burundi. Burundi are debutants and we have never played them before, but they are not there by chance.

We don’t know a lot about them, but we have watched some of their games during the qualifying campaign and we got as much information as we can about so that we really plan and prepare well to get us ready for the game,” said Ellis. 

“Our neighbours from Cosafa are also debutants, we have played them many times before. We have never lost to them in 90 minutes, but we must never forget the 2020 Olympic qualifiers for Tokyo. We couldn’t score and we lost out on penalties. It has always been difficult and tight against them. So, it is going to be difficult against them because we know a lot about each other.”

The tournament will start on 2 July and until 22 July.