Bafana Bafana coach Molefi Ntseki was full of praise for his side after the 2-1 Nelson Mandela Challenge victory over Mali in Port Elizabeth on Sunday.
It was Ntseki’s first game in charge, having taken over the reins from Stuart Baxter after the Africa Cup of Nations. Dean Furman and Themba Zwane scored for Bafana, while Sekou Koita got himself on the scoresheet for Mali.
And Ntseki expressed his delight with the display of his troops and believes the win will give the side a lot of confidence going in to their AFCON qualifier against Ghana in November.
“It’s a good win for the nation, it’s a good win in honour of Tata Madiba and the Nelson Mandela Children’s fund. We came here to perform and we did that. We are all happy,” Ntseki told SABC.
“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.
“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] even a better performance, from what we’ve seen today will get us a result in Ghana.
“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.”