Sundhage impressed by Banyana as Brazil draws first blood

Despite thumping Banyana Banyana 3-0 in the first international friendly match played at the Orlando stadium last night, Brazil senior women™s national team head coach Pia Sundhage was not entirely happy with her team™s showing.

The Copa América Femenina champions punished Banyana through their own mistakes, scoring two goals in the first half through Geyse, Adriana and Tamires added the third goal in the second half. Sundhage, praised Banyana for a good showing.

œDisappointed and I have to give a lot of credit to South Africa the way they played-they made it hard for us and we didn™t have a good game today. First of all we did not complete passes, simple passes and to some extent, I could-uhh a pretty good excuses we had long travel and one-two practices if that™s an excuse said Sundhage.

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œBut to complete passes and then it was from our side, I think the possession was not good enough and not only that, when South Africa start to play I don™t think we were compact enough and usually we are so much more compact, we win the ball a little bit higher, so there™s a couple of players -they had our time today and I have to give credit to South Africa as well especially when they kept possession and we had to defend quite a bit, so [it™s] something to work on in the next game

The two teams will now switch their focus to the second international friendly match at the Moses Mabhida stadium in Durban on Monday evening.

Banyana head coach Desiree Ellis acknowledged their short comings at the back on the day but overall, she was happy with the performance of the team.

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œWe wanted to play our game, we said we wanted to make sure we come out of this game with being proud of ourselves and I thought we really rotated the ball very well. Defensively, I thought in the beginning we were bit shaky but we managed to sort that out and to concede two goals right at end of the first half I thought it was communal. I know not picking-diving- we spoke about that, we spoke about if you free,[and] someone else is free you have got to scan and look around. I thought we created few chances especial with Hildah [Magaia] having that once chance and that™s where we got a little bit more clinical" said Ellis.

œIn the second half we played very well as well, created a lot on transition, I thought our final ball in the final third was a bit poor, that™s gonna be better and once again we made a mistake where they scored from but I'm really proud of the team."

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"I thought we rotated the ball very well and stood up to them. We knew they were going to put us under pressure and that is what we wanted, to be able to play out of that pressure-many times we did, but we™ve gotta be better defensively, but other than I am really proud of the team

By Velile Mnyandu