SA expects us to qualify for Olympics – David Notoane

Notoane’s charges were held to a 1-1 draw at the Dobsonville Stadium earlier in the week, putting themselves under pressure to get the job done on the road to book a place at the youth Afcon in Morocco three months from now.

It’s there that the three teams to represent Africa at the 2024 Olympics in Paris will be confirmed, which is Notoane’s mandate.

"We spoke about it and it's an expectation, it's what we want, it's what South Africa wants. But I don't think the boys were under any form of pressure, talking of going to the qualification for Afcon and the Olympics, the most important thing was to focus on this game," he said.

Notoane believes that the team will produce a better performance in the return leg against Congo now that they’ve got a couple of sessions together.

"Now going into Congo, we would have been together for more days. Yesterday you could see the team starting to have a feel of cohesion. Hence, I'm saying the way we started showed that the cohesion is there. Then when the pressure comes like normal young players suddenly you start to see things that you didn't train and again, players play according to how they play in their clubs," he added.

The priority for Notoane is the finishing – his u23 side fluffed numerous chances in the first leg in Soweto.

"We created a lot of good opportunities and we'll look at it and perhaps see the final pass was not the right one or the delayed pass. We worked on crossing and finishing only in one session yesterday. Now we have an opportunity to fine-tune them and I think we will open them for sure," he concluded.