Johannesburg – “We’ll play for pride,” said South Africa’s Olympic football coach David Notoane after his side crashed 4-3 out of the Tokyo Summer Games following a gallant performance against France on Sunday.
Speaking immediately after the devastating loss and looking forward to their last Group A game against Mexico on Wednesday, Notoane intimated that South Africa’s pride was at stake when they meet the rampaging south Americans.
The Mexicans have not lost a match in the group stage after giving France a 4-1 routing in their opener on Thursday and thrashing hosts Japan 2-0 on Sunday.
“We have to go to the last game and play for our pride and try our best to get to the next round,” Notoane said in his post-match media conference soon after the hurtful loss against the French.
After a halftime goalless stalemate, South Africa took the lead through Kobamelo Kodisang but the French replied via one of the oldest player Andre-Pierr Gignac. Evidence Makgopa put Mzansi in the driving seat for the second time.
However Gignac equalised only for Tebogo Mokoena to give SA the lead once again in the 81st minute.
But for the third time, France levelled matters through Gignac converting a penalty – 3-3 it stood.
The South Africans were dealt a heavy blow when Teji Savanier banged in the winner for France late in the game.
“We will go and display the kind of football that South Africa is capable of. It is a chance for the players to market themselves and we should take the last game as our prize and an opportunity to go home with our heads held high,” said Notoane.
“It was a difficult, exciting, emotional [France] game because we went for it and they also came for it and, in the end, it was a game of margin of errors. We made more mistakes in our defensive areas than France.
“Sad as it is, but that is what football is, what more can we say? The approach was primarily to manage our energy levels and hopefully to take a draw, which unfortunately did not happen. In the next two games, we hoped to give a kind of performance like today,” Notoane said.
“The challenge before us ahead of the Japan game was that we had three days to prepare and we had almost seven days without training, so we decided to go with an approach against Japan that would allow us to have the kind of performance in terms of energy today [Sunday].
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