Ronwen Williams reveals the one Hugo Broos tactic Bafana were punished for ignoring

Bafana Bafana had a tough outing against France going down heavily to the world champions in an international friendly. 

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Bafana Bafana had no answer for France who would go on to win 5-0 at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Lille.

Mbappe was unplayable

Not a lot was expected from Bafana Bafana in the form of resistance, but they did manage to show just that for around 25 minutes in in a packed stadium. It wouldn’t take long for the France to eventually break the deadlock through a superb curling effort from Kylian Mbappe. AC Milan target man Olivier Giroud would then add the second goal for the French, would capitalised on some sloppy play in the South African final third. 

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France would then up the ante in the second stanza, which saw additional goals from Mbappe, Wissam Ben Yedder and Matteo Guendouzi take the game away from Bafana Bafana and truly highlife the gulf in quality between the two sides. That gulf could have been further emphasised by the hosts if it wasn’t for the heroics of South African captain Ronwen Williams. The SuperSport United man pulled off some superb saves throughout the game sparring his side of further embarrassment. 

Williams sees both positives and negatives

Speaking during the post-match conference, Williams admitted that while it was a great experience and learning curve to play against France, Bafana Bafana let themselves down by ignoring a key instruction and tactic from coach Hugo Broos. 

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“It was a wonderful experience playing against such huge stars, obviously the players will learn a lot from this, and this will only make us a better team going forward. We will focus more on the performance than the result, so there are a lot of positive things we will take to our qualifiers coming up in June. There obviously a lot of negatives that we need to work on to get better” said Williams. 

SA let themselves down against France

Williams then delved deeper into the ignored tactic and how it affected Bafana Bafana, as well as highlighted the gulf between them and France.

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“Obviously no goalkeeper wants to concede five goals, but I mean this is high quality players you are playing against. We don’t face this every week in our local league. We happy that it happened in a friendly game so now, we have things to focus on going into the qualifiers. As a defence unite I think, the coach made mention that we shouldn’t press them high and we should keep our shape and I think during the game there were some lapses in concentration where we ended up pressing them and they got high quality to play out of the press and it left us open a bit, but we need to take the positives out of this, and I’m sure it will make us a better team going forward.” Williams concluded. 

Whats next for Broos and his side?

Bafana Bafana will now next be in action during the next international window in June, when they participate in the AFCON 2023 qualifiers.