Mkhalele on why Bafana failed to progress in CHAN qualifiers
Helman Mkhalele has reacted to Bafana Bafana’s stunning CHAN qualifiers exit following a 4-1 defeat to Angola at Dobsonville Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
The southwestern Africans progressed to the next round with a 6-1 win on aggregate.
After losing to the Angolan side away from home in the second round, first leg of the qualifier, coach Mkhalele had hoped Bafana would overturn the 2-0 deficit.
‘I would say I’m disappointed about the results. I could also see the disappointment in the players as well. To lose with such a big margin at home, especially when we started better by taking the lead that also gave the players the belief that we can turn around the results,” Mkhalele told SAFA media in a post-match interview.
“But unfortunately, when they equalised, I believe that took the esteem on the team, especially on the mindset of the players. When I look at them, they were so discarded though we tried to uplift them to believe they could score more goals.
The 52-year-old mentor also spoke about the psychological factor: “I felt that psychologically the equaliser had a huge impact on it then again when we started second half when they scored the second goal, the team just stopped to believe that it was possible to go out there to get better results.”
Meanwhile, the former SA U20 head coach has said he is willing to take responsibility for the team’s poor performance as they knew they were coming against a formidable opponent that is highly and well-conditioned.
“But again, I can’t fault the efforts, fighting spirit and attitude of the players. You could see they were playing against a well-conditioned team, and at some point, we could see the players struggled to cope with the pace or intensity of the Angolan players due to the conditioning of our players.”