Roger De Sa defends Bafana Bafana’s AFCON performance despite early exit

1996 Bafana Bafana AFCON-winning squad member Roger De Sa has weighed in on the team’s run at the ongoing continental showpiece, diverting from “popular opinion”.

Bafana were eliminated from the event in the Last 16 on Sunday night after losing 2–1 to Cameroon at the Agdal Medina Stadium in Rabat.

That result stung for the team and their supporters as they arrived at the event full of confidence that they would emulate the ’96 class and surpass their third-place finish from the last edition in Ivory Coast.

After all, Hugo Broos and his men had done well in the past few months following the event in Ivory Coast, qualifying for AFCON without a loss and automatically securing their ticket to the World Cup finals in June for the first time in more than two decades.

However, most Bafana fans saw the early elimination coming. They stressed that the team wasn’t at their best in the group stage after nervy wins over Angola and Zimbabwe, and a loss to Egypt. That’s why the defeat to Cameroon also came as no surprise.

De Sa, though, chose the path less travelled during an exclusive interview with Independent Media on Tuesday afternoon.

“Overall, if you take the feedback from the football side of analysis, I think we were quite good,” De Sa acknowledged. “I think we competed as a top country in Africa, something we are not used to.

“Considering that 90% of the players are playing in our league, I think we were one of the few teams in the knockout stage with the most domestic players. We did okay.

“I don’t think we were bad at all. I hear a lot of people say, ‘Ah, Bafana Bafana this and that.’ I think, football-wise, we competed and played for our place.”

With Bafana having shown a strong defensive display at AFCON - led by Mbekezeli Mbokazi and Siyabonga Ngezana - De Sa believes they were bound to be found wanting up front.

“Everyone wants to score goals,” De Sa stated. “But it’s like a short blanket: when you pull the blanket far up to cover your head, it exposes your feet. When you cover your feet, your head sneaks out.

“You can’t have both sides of it. We are not Brazil, France, or one of those teams, so we have to be careful how we play. We have to take calculated risks and make sure that we keep things tidy at the back.”

Still, the former Orlando Pirates coach believes that Bafana played to their strengths up front; they were just unlucky not to put their chances away.

“Let’s be honest, most of our goals may have come in the second half, but I think we created opportunities in all the games that we played,” De Sa said.

“I don’t have the stats, but even in the game we played against Cameroon, we could have easily gone into half-time 2–0 up, and it would have been a totally different story.”

Having come up against the likes of Manchester City and Liverpool talismans Omar Marmoush and Mohamed Salah of Egypt in the group stage, and Manchester United star Bryan Mbeumo of Cameroon in the last 16, De Sa says Bafana’s inferiority was duly exposed.

“If you said to me our lack of scoring goals is an issue, then yes, I don’t think we have a natural goal scorer or a world-class goal scorer,” De Sa said.

“That’s one thing I think we lacked a bit, but in terms of scoring, I think our guys played to their strengths, did what they could, and showed up.”