Bafana Bafana coach Stuart Baxter has the blueprint to beating Senegal in the Nelson Mandela Cup on Saturday.
However, crucial in exposing Baxter’s master plan and ending Bafana’s disastrous nine-match winless streak will be Aaron Mokoena and his charges.
For a while now, Baxter has spoken about structure and that his players need to keep to their structure in order to produce the results and win games.
Somehow Baxter’s vision is not entirely shared by his players, as they have only shown glimpses of their potential.
”We need a structure to be effective and not just cosmetic. We have been able to show football that our supporters like, but if you lose as we have, then there is nothing to really like.
”We need to be more structured in our play, which could mean some discomfort for some of the players,” Baxter said on Thursday.
But Baxter was still upbeat that his team could be effective and finally produce the tonic to turn around one of Bafana’s worst seasons yet.
”I encourage the guys to show creativity, but the challenge now is to contain that creativity in a structure and yield productivity,” said Baxter.
Key to Baxter’s structural pattern of play will be the defence, which will need to contend with the physical nature of the Lions of Teranga.
”The Senegalese have a physical power which we can’t match and we will need to close them down. We have to make sure that we hustle them and avoid one-on-one situations, which have often been our undoing,” Baxter said.
With a sound defensive structure, Baxter believes that goals can come for Bafana Bafana, as his team’s defensive woes have often been their undoing and led to the eventual derailment of their 2006 World Cup campaign.
”We won’t win anything if we give away stupid goals. We need to defend well and the goals will come, but that is something we have not done well lately. We have got to defend better as a team,” quipped Baxter.
While Baxter contrives to build a formidable wall at the back, problems arose in Bafana’s goal-scoring department with the possible exclusion of in-form midfielder Elrio van Heerden’s ankle injury.
Van Heerden failed to practise with the rest of his teammates on Thursday afternoon at Westbourne Oval after twisting his ankle during Tuesday evening’s practice session.
”We are still awaiting word from the medical staff of Elrio’s situation, but it looks like soft-tissue damage and not a fracture as we initially suspected,” said a worried Baxter.
Baxter has enough depth in his squad to do without Van Heerden, but then there is the little problem of the master plan, one that had Van Heerden’s name all over it. — Sapa