THE SA Football Association (Safa) president Danny Jordaan has added his voice to those of millions of South Africans unhappy with the manner in which Bafana Bafana lost 3-1 to Mauritania on Saturday.
Despite having redeemed themselves with a 1-0 win over Senegal in the Nelson Mandela Challenge at Orlando Stadium on Tuesday, Jordaan said he was waiting for a detailed technical report on what went wrong in Mauritania.
“I have not received a report yet to say this is what happened,” said the Port Elizabeth mayor.
“But we are unhappy, let me say that. You won’t find a South African happy with that result . . .
“I went to speak to the players and technical team before the match against Senegal because they couldn’t take us from unhappiness to depression. At least they took us from unhappiness to a smile.”
Jordaan argued they had given Bafana all the support they wanted ahead of the Mauritania match, which was a 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifier.
“They asked us, for example, if they could fly on a chartered flight because they didn’t want to make many stops. We booked them a charter and took them there and back.
“For most of the matches they played in Afcon last year the transport was by charter. We even flew them on a chartered flight to the finals in Equatorial Guinea. I think if you talk about support, there’s no nation on the African continent that gets more support than we give this team.”
On the issue of the total lack of research done on the opposition, Jordaan said it was the technical team’s responsibility to understand the team they are up against and the track record of that team over the past three to five matches.
