07 Jul 2021

The senior national football team, Zebras lost 1-0 to Bafana Bafana of South Africa in a COSAFA Cup game played at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on Tuesday.

The solitary goal was netted in the 67th minute of the game by Kagiso Malinga, who came in as a substitute.

Now, the Zebras will have to dig deeper to win their next game against Lesotho to be played at Isaac Wolfson Stadium on Saturday.Coach Letang Kgwengwenyane said in an interview after the game , that he was happy with the Zebras’ performance, although he was not happy with the results, given that their mission was to either win or draw, to have an advantage going forward.

“Unfortunately, we conceded a goal, which we could have defended, but overall they played very well, we need to improve in creating more entries into the attacking third,” he said.Kgwengwenyane said going forward, they would also need to push more numbers into the 18th yard area to create more chances to finish and still encourage their full-backs to attack and make some over-lap runs to create numerical advantage.

He said they were going to fine-tune and polish the mistakes, preparing for the remaining games.

Meanwhile, COSAFA said the Zebras were now in Group A with Lesotho, eSwatini, South Africa and Zambia after the late withdrawal by Madagascar, which had forced a change to the competition format, to now have two groups of five teams each.

COSAFA said Madagascar’s failure to secure their travel to Nelson Mandela Bay for the tournament and the Comoros Islands’ decision not to partake, left the original Group B with only Zambia and Malawi.

Therefore the original format of a three-group competition had been simplified into two pools, with the top two nations in each group advancing to the semifinals. ENDS