Banyana Banyana head coach Dr Desiree Ellis says they have to leave no stone unturned ahead of their 2026 WAFCON qualifier against DR Congo in three months.
SA finished in a disappointing fourth place as they failed to defend their 2022 WAFCON crown.
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Upon arrival from Morocco on Monday evening, Ellis was asked what the future looks like, a question she shrugged off saying Banyana were preparing for the WAFCON qualifier and the COSAFA Cup.
“We have to prepare for a qualifier in October,” said Ellis.
“I’m not sure when the COSAFA Cup is because we haven’t got dates. So that’s it and before we even talk about WAFCON, that’s going to be a very, very important qualifier. We saw the DR Congo in the group of Zambia and Morocco, yes, they might have lost their first game 4-0 but they are a formidable team. We played them last year in the qualifiers as well, with a very young team because we didn’t have players available.
“But as we said you cannot underestimate anyone because these teams are growing, and they are putting investment in as you saw. So, we have to make sure that we do get the squad right again. We have to make sure that we do a proper analysis again, like we did. And I must take my hat off to the analyst. Everything he said was going to happen happened. Everything he said they were going to do they did. We knew that certain teams were going to play the long ball. We trained for that. We knew all of those things.
“But to get it perfectly, you actually have to work with it a bit longer because you had I think two days between the quarter-final and the semi-final. And normally it’s a rest period of 72 hours. We had a travel day in between, and we didn’t look like a team that played 120 minutes, and this is the grit and the resilience that this team has shown. As far as I know the next game is in October. I’m not sure about the COSAFA it might be sooner.”
Meanwhile, the coach bemoaned the injuries that befell her squad at the tournament that also saw her making a lot of changes in their final game. She revealed that she could have travelled with more players but did not for reasons she could not divulge.
“Look, CAF gave us the opportunity that we would be able to take bigger squads, but we took a squad of 22 for various reasons which I’m not going to say now,” added Ellis.
“But we took that squad and that’s why we selected the players we selected to make sure that we had a lot of options; that we had a lot of depth, which we did have. And I think injury is part of the tournament, but some of the injuries really cut off our options in terms of players that can play in a lot of positions. We also took some young players with us because we also may have to make sure that you prepare players for the future, like we’ve always done. And I think that for us was a big plus.”
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