Banyana can deal with physical teams

Banyana Banyana coach Desiree Ellis is hoping to use the upcoming Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Challenge and Albertina Sisulu Centenary friendlies against the Netherlands and Sweden to gauge her team’s progress over the past 12 months.

Banyana certainly enjoyed a stellar 2018 under Ellis, who was named Caf Women’s Coach of the Year recently, since Sweden beat them at Cape Town Stadium in January last year. Since that defeat, the SA national women’s football team have won the Cosafa Cup, finished runners-up at the Africa Women’s Cup of Nations, and qualified for the Fifa World Cup for the first time. One of the major challenges that the Netherlands and Sweden will pose Banyana is their physicality, particularly in the aerial challenges due to their superior height advantage.

Ellis, though, feels that her team showed at Awcon that they can compete - and even beat - teams that are physically stronger than them if they stick to their unique style of football.

“At Awcon we were true to who we were. We knew we couldn’t compete physically with the Nigerians, Ghanaians, Equatorial Guinea. Putting the ball on the ground was key for us. We never waved from that. We kept playing our own way,” Ellis said.

“I think that was important that we did not change because of the technical ability that we do have. We saw in the match last year against Sweden that we might have lost 3-0, but the result was not a true reflection of the game. We could have scored on many occasions, and our finishing has improved a bit. It is one area that has to improve. We are a team that is always going to create chances, but we have to improve because at the World Cup we might only get one chance.”

Ellis stressed that it was crucial that Banyana identified the brand of football they want to play, particularly with the players at their disposal.

“It is important to play to our strengths. I think technically our players are quite good. We (are) never going to be winning by playing balls in the air, although we do have central defenders and midfielders who are really good in the air. But if we have someone like Thembi (Kgatlana) or even Amanda (Dlamini), they are tiny but very quick,” said Ellis. “But we have shown in that goal against Nigeria that we won the first ball, then the second, and then Tembi was gone and what a fantastic goal. The Nigerian coach said our counter-attacks are good. That is the type of football we want to play and we pride ourselves on being defensively sound.”

Banyana face the Netherlands on Saturday at 3pm at Cape Town Stadium.