Amajita coach Thabo Senong believes that his team have the ability to overturn a 0-0 home leg draw in their Africa Under-20 Nations Cup qualifier against Malawi when they travel to the second leg in Blantyre on July 21.
The South Africans have an uphill battle being one of the seven qualifiers who join hosts Niger for the tournament from February 24 to March 10‚ having been held at home by Malawi at Moruleng Stadium on Sunday.
Senong’s SA U-20s dominated the home leg but missed chances.
“For us‚ this was just the first half. And the second half will be in Malawi‚” the coach said.
“We would have loved to have scored. But unfortunately we could not score so we now have a lot of work to do going to Malawi.
“But the game is not over. We just have to concentrate‚ continue to be solid‚ make sure we don’t concede in Malawi‚ create chances and then try to score some goals.
“It’s another 90 minutes away from home. We always score away from home. We always defend well away from home.
“So I have no doubt that we will do well in Malawi.”
Senong was adamant that his team had played to plan in their assertive performance in Moruleng‚ with just missed chances letting the South Africans down.
“Nothing went wrong because we didn’t concede a goal. And we had moments where we dominated and created chances. Luck was just not on our side to score goals‚” he said.
“We’ll continue working on creating chances in training just to increase the confidence of the team. Because we can defend solidly‚ but we need to score goals.”
Senong’s team had a bye in the first round and beat Mozambique 4-1 on aggregate in the second‚ drawing 1-1 away and winning 3-0 at home.
Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package. 