‘Mali win will give us shot of confidence’ – Ntseki

by Nick Said

Monday Oct 14, 2019. 10:00

New Bafana Bafana coach Molefi Ntseki has described Sunday’s victory over Mali in the Nelson Mandela Challenge as a “good confidence booster” ahead of the start of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers next month.

Dean Furman converted a penalty and Themba Zwane added a second in the 2-1 victory, during which Bafana had to withstand some heavy pressure from the west Africans.

“It’s a good win for the nation. We came here to perform and we did that. We are all happy,” Ntseki said.

“If you look the overall performance of the team, they showed commitment, a lot of confidence when they were in possession and they defended well. I think credit must also go to Mali, they have a very good team.

“They have very good individual players, they had the structure but I think we had the upper hand in the general performance of the game itself.”

Bafana open their Nations Cup qualifier campaign in Ghana next month and Ntseki feels there is much to build on.

“It’s a good confidence booster going to Ghana having played and won against a team like Mali, a very strong team one must say. Now we’re looking forward to play Ghana in Ghana and hopefully the same performance or an even better one. What we’ve seen today will get us a result in Ghana.”

Ntseki does also feel there is also much to work on for his side.

“I think we played against a quality team, we were very sharp in terms of our decision making, but in most cases we were coming second, especially from long balls. I think we need to find a way of dealing with physically strong players, because when they charge the ball you can see that physically they are very strong and they don’t pull out.

“We need to find a way to deal with these kind of teams that depend more on their physical ability.”