‘School-boy’ defensive errors cost Brave Warriors – Mannetti
NFA- The Brave Warriors deserve their result on Tuesday night as they missed out on the 2018 Cosafa Cup Plate Final with a 4-1 defeat to South Africa in their semi-final match at the Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, South Africa.
In his most brutal assessment ever, coach Ricardo Mannetti said the Brave Warriors committed a lot of errors and at this level of the game it was going to bite them big time.
“We made amateur defensive mistakes in the first 30 minutes and they scored two goals. And after we got our goal and immediately allowed them to score their third goal, and it was all over for us then as we had to fix a lot of problems and it was very costly for us in the end,” said Mannetti.
For South Africa, Aubrey Modiba scored their first from the penalty-spot on 26 minutes after a handball by Namibia’s Vitapi Ngaruka, and they were 2-0 ahead three minutes later as Ryan Moon fed Maboe in the box and he supplied a cool finish.
The Brave Warriors hit back five minutes before the break when substitute Absalom Iimbondi provided a perfect chipped pass over the back of the Bafana Bafana defence and South African-based Hotto planted a fine volley passed Pieterse.
With that goal Hotto moved past Namibia legend Johannes ‘Congo’ Hindjou as the leading scorer for the country in the COSAFA Cup competition with his sixth.
But that Namibian joy was short-lived as more excellent work from Gift Links created a shooting chance for Maboe, who’s effort from 14-yards was deflected in.
South Africa’s fourth arrived on 53 minutes when a free-kick was flicked on and Max Mbaeva could only palm the ball into the path of Xulu to score at the back post.
“With a number of errors in the game, we didn’t deserve to win and we got punished and it was damage control for us in the second half. We deserve the result we got,” added Mannetti.
It was the third time in a row that the Brave Warriors, after winning the Cosafa Cup in 2015 have played in the Plate Section with diminishing fortunes. In 2016, the team won the Plate and in 2017 lost to South Africa in the final and now exit at semi-final stage, again against South Africa.
