Moments of wayward brilliance and woeful finishing were the overriding features of Bafana Bafana’s 1-1 draw with Swaziland’s minnows at Ellis Park on Tuesday in a nightmarish performance that will probably leave new Brazil-born coach Carlos Alberto Parreira waking up at nights in sweaty disbelief over the maze of missed chances.
Swaziland upset all pre-ordained ideas by opening the score in the eighth minute through Tony Tsabedze after his fellow South Africa-based teammate at SuperSport United, Dennis Masina, had carved huge gaps in the Bafana defence.
And after squandering countless scoring chances in the first half, Bafana finally equalised two minutes after the interval through substitute Thembinkosi Fanteni.
But the bottom line of what was billed a training game for Bafana on a warm, steamy night is that the budding cream of South African soccer, who were supposedly made up of potential 2010 World Cup aspirants, should under no circumstances have ended up sharing the spoils in a home contest against resolute, tenacious, but strictly limited opposition who are ranked 151st in the world by Fifa.
Initially organised with the express purpose of presenting the Bafana side, which takes part in a crucial African Nations Cup clash in 10 days, with a much-needed warm-up, the squad on this occasion only had one or two of the players who will probably face up to Chad in Chad.
This was due mainly to the fact that the backbone of overseas-based stars were unavailable, but the matter was then made farcical when the Premier Soccer League elected to fixture rampant champions Mamelodi Sundowns with an Absa Cup game against Maritzburg United on Wednesday night and substantially deplete Bafana further of their stars.
With an overwhelming superiority in individual skills and often promising magical goals from their build-ups in midfield, Bafana’s finishing was no better than that of gross amateurs.
The mesmerising Scara Ngobese set the trend in the 23rd minute when he fumbled a chance with only the goalkeeper to beat, while Mabhuti Khanyaze could have had a first-half hat-trick had he made better use of his dribbling prowess and movement off the ball.
Surprisingly, in view of Bafana’s territorial domination, Parreira played throughout the first half with a conservative 4-5-1 formation. Then, when he switched to something more adventurous in the second period and employed two and three strikers at a time, the finishing only became more wayward.
Substitute Petros Mahlatsi was guilty of what could aptly be described as ”the miss of the season” in the 77th minute — and he held his head in shame over his indiscretion as the crowd howled in disbelief.
Fanteni, after scoring the equaliser, almost secured a second goal with a cunning back-heeled shot. But he also conspired to run round the field like a frightened hare at times and did not seem to know which goal he was aiming at. — Sapa