MUST READ:Baxter full of excuses after Seychelles embarrassment
Updated | By Sky Tshabalala
Don't put away those calculators just yet because Bafana Bafana simply do not like taking the simple route to a major tournament.
The saying goes," you take one step forward and two back" that is exactly what our beloved Bafana Bafana team has done.
After a 6-0 win against Seychelles in Johannesburg, Bafana looked set to make it back to back wins(one would think) against the same opponents 3 days later but in typical Bafana style they did what Bafana do.
A goalless draw against a team ranked 115 places below South Africa in the FIFA rankings left many people asking " but how?".
Well, coach Stuart Baxter has told us why blaming the pitch the referee and even the ball boys.
"Immediately afterwards I was frustrated and angry about the way the game panned out,"
"I met Gernot Rohr, the Nigeria coach in London and he told me the pitch was the worst he had ever played on in a competitive game, and I agree with him.
"That’s not an excuse, because we still did enough to win the game. But, I think it was a combination of the pitch, some unbelievable time-wasting and cheating by the opponents, a very poor refereeing performance and us not taking advantage of our chances.
"I think that's how you know you can get that result. We had a clear penalty turned down, Nigeria got a penalty, we hit the crossbar and it bounced out, Nigeria hit the crossbar and it hit the goalkeeper and went in. Those are the margins, you need a bit of luck on that pitch.
"So I think the boys did as much as they could. We needed a bit of quality at the right time.
"The players were very, very deflated - I don't want to say embarrassed because that would be deriding the effort that they put in, but they know the result was important for us, so they were therefore very down after the game."
Now for me these are just petty excuses from a man who failed at his job. Nigeria played on the same field, the same ball boys and the same weather but won 3-0, so why cant we?
If the Blitzbokke drew or lost to Papua New Guinea or Mamelodi Sundowns lost to Powerline FC they would certainly have to answer for that but not Baxter, he would rather let his players post instagram pictures as if they're on holiday in Seychelles.
So the permutations are back make sure you dust off that Bafana calculator because the easy nicely tarred road to AFCON 2019 just turned into gravel.
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