Bafana legend remembers Nigeria danger

Bafana Bafana have made South Africans dream and believe in them again.

The boys have sealed an Afcon semi-finals clash with Nigeria on Wednesday, thanks to a thrilling win over Cape Verde in the quarter-finals last Saturday night in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast.

With the mighty Nigeria lurking ahead, assistant coach Helman Mkhalele has remembered the pain of 2000.

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BAFANA BAFANA BEAT CAPE VERDE TO QUALIFY FOR THE AFCON 2023 SEMI-FINALS

As confirmed last weekend, the game ended goalless after 90 minutes and 30 minutes of extra time, where Williams delivered a staggering save to deny Gilson Tavares a winner in the 88th minute.

Bafana went on to win the penalty kicks 2-1, a very unusual score in the shootouts, right? Well, no goalkeeper in a major tournament has ever saved four out of five penalties before.

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Coach Hugo Broos admitted that the tension of the match caused him to age a few more years, but man of the match Williams saved the night.

“Let’s say six hours ago I was 71, now I’m 75,” Broos said as quoted by iDiskiTimes.

“It was a stressful game, certainly the penalties. You know what happens when you have to take penalties, it’s a very special situation for the players,” the Bafana mentor added.

“Sometimes you do a little game after training, taking penalties, and nearly no player misses a penalty, but you see today what happened, not only with us but also the players from Cape Verde. That means we can be happy, but players want to get a penalty. We were not lucky because we had a very good keeper today. If you can save four penalties, this is not luck anymore. You can save one, but four, this is not luck.

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“He did not only that, he saved us two minutes before the end with a player that was alone infront of him. Yes, he was the Man of the match. I think we could choose nobody else, because he is really Man of the Match,” the Bafana tactician concluded.

HELMAN MKHALELE REMEMBERS NIGERIA DEFEAT

Looking ahead to Bafana’s semi-final against the Super Eagles of Nigeria on Wednesday at 19:00, assistant coach Mkhalele was one of the players who lost 2-0 to Nigeria in a semi-final game in Burkina Faso in 2000.

“Ja, going to that game, I still remember when we landed in Lagos, people were raising their hands and said, ‘You’re going to get [beaten by] five’,” the former winger said via SABC.

“If you saw, there was so much – in inverted comas – ‘that hatred’, and I believe maybe as a team, we couldn’t handle that type of pressure [before the match].

“But when we got onto the pitch, I would say we made some mistakes that cost us dearly, and playing against a top team with top players in Africa – even the world, I think that sealed our fate because you can’t make mistakes against top players.

“All of a sudden, it was 2-0, and to have to chase that game was really hard.

“Going forward from 2000, the Nigerians were always been [sic] mocking us and saying bad things about us, but fortunately over the years, we started to close that gap,” added Mkhalele.

“Even now, today, I still believe that as much as they claim dominance, they are no longer claiming it with that same confidence. So, that is what I believe our players will just carry [into the game], because they just want to make history for themselves,” the player known as Midnight Express concluded.

You can find more articles from Siseko Gwegwe here.