Courageous
Pitso Mosimane showed most football lovers his hand by changing his philosophy
in football. The failure of Pitso and his troops to qualify for the 2012 Africa
Cu of Nations would never been attributed to weak defence.
Pitso
had mastered the art of protecting South Africa goal post with a remarkable
statistic. (please do some research). We become accustomed to a strong Bafana
Bafana defence performances where in more than three games, the man of the
match were defenders.
In
this game: Bafana Bafana vs Senegal, we have seen the danger of changing our
approach in order to please most.
Back Five, Itumeleng Khune, Morgan
Gould, Tsepo Masilela, Bongani Khumalo and Anele Ngcongca are the strongest
back five you can currently have in South Africa. However, the two full backs (Anele
and Masilela) couldn’t go forward and create havoc at the Senegal defence with
crossings.
Why?
Well, this takes me to my point, South Africa under Pitso and the 2 Brazilian
brothers got to play with 2 defensive players in the middle. Their role is of
supporting the full backs when overlapping and keep the defence in sharp and
balanced. This time around, Pitso used one, Kagisho Dikgacoi. This created a
danger when Bafana didn’t have the ball.
We
got penetrated more often than we would have loved (yes, no shooting on target
from weak Senegal attackers) but the fact that Khune had to come out three
times in the first half to collect the ball or play as a swipper isn’t a good
sign.
Bafana
manage to create a lot of scoring opportunities, starting with Steven Pienaar who
was collecting the ball from Dikgacoi, was quickly supported by Thulani Serero
and May Mahlangu (all good ball player) hence it was easy to breach Senegal
defence.
Pitso
started with a 4-1-3 (with the captain Pienaar deep not up) and two (Edward
Manqele just behind Katlego "Killer" Mphela)
After
making six changes, he went back to 4-4-2 using Lebohang Mokoena as an
attacking wing, Thamsanqa Sangweni playing along Teko Modise who was in advance
position.
Overall,
it wasn’t a bad performance from the boys but we should look at this point (each
time we had a 50-50 battle for the ball; we lost the plot, except at the back).
Way
forward, keep believing and don’t shoot the coach or boo the boys.
This
is my view; I’m just sharing with my friends. I love you all.
By Christopher L
Bongo
