Baxter plays blame game
Stuart Baxter (below) blamed everything from the pitch, to the refereeing, to the ball boys, as Bafana Bafana returned home yesterday from the Seychelles, after a desperately disappointing goalless draw had left their chances of qualifying for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations hanging in the balance.
A win at home to Nigeria next month or away to Libya in March will still send Bafana to Cameroon 2019, but had they beaten the Seychelles at the Stade Linite, South Africa would only need one more point to go through.
After a 6-0 win at FNB Stadium on Saturday against a country that does not even have a professional league, Bafana had been expected to pick up another three points on the road, and it was hardly surprising that there were no fans at OR Tambo International airport to welcome them home.
“We are massively disappointed of course, with the result,” said Baxter. “Every player is very deflated, I don’t want to say embarrassed, because that would be deriding the effort they put in, but they know the result was important for us and they were … very down after the game.
“Immediately after the game I was frustrated and angry … I met the Nigerian coach Gernot Rohr in London and he told me it was the worst pitch he had ever played on in a competitive game and I agree. It is not an excuse, but a combination of the pitch, unbelievable time-wasting and cheating by our opponents, a very poor refereeing performance and us not taking advantage of the chance we created, meant we could not get a result.”
The difference between Bafana and Nigeria, of course, is that the Super Eagles won 3-0 in the Seychelles, but Baxter put this basically down to bad luck.
“We had a clear penalty turned down, Nigeria got a penalty, we hit the bar and it came down and bounced out, they hit the bar and it hit the keeper on the neck and it went in, those are the margins.”
Baxter also talked of “goal” Percy Tau had disallowed, though replays showed it was offside, while his penalty claim also looked like a clean tackle on Lebo Mothiba.