A frustrated Desiree Ellis said that the important job of getting three points was achieved in Banyana Banyana’s 3-1 win over Burundi, but she felt her team over elaborated at times.
Banyana could have won by a much larger margin on Thursday evening, and there at least 15 chances not taken by the South Africans, but the win was enough to secure their passage into the WAFCON quarter-finals in Morocco.
Ellis said their performance was not up to par on the day, but it was enough to comfortably win still, and that is what counted in the end.
“I felt that we had enough on the field to get the result, but I felt that I think we over elaborated at times, and most of the shots that we took were practically straight at the goalkeeper, I thought she would get player of the match,” Ellis said in the post-match press conference.
“We tried to change it a bit, it looked better, we created a lot of opportunities, but once again, you know how our rest defence, when we attacked our rest defence was not ready for the counter and we conceded poorly once again. So that’s something we have to work on.
“We said we needed three points, we said these points were going to be massive, to get us into the next stage.
“And the three points are there. We always looking for improved performances but today was not a good day in terms of that, but the result is also just as important.”
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Ellis said at no times did they underestimate their opponents, and said there were a number of factors why they didn’t win by a bigger margin.
“We have never ever underestimated a team and we never will underestimate a team,” Ellis said.
“I think there’s a lot of factors, but we’re not looking for excuses. At times we played pretty good football, at times we did not.
“And as I said at times we over-elaborated. I think the heat could have also played a huge factor, it was very very hot today, not what we used to.
“But nonetheless, we still could have kept possession better, we still could have rotated the ball quicker, which we wanted to do. We still could have not played the long ball, which we need not want to do, but we really did not underestimate any team.”
