The Sasol-sponsored Banyana Banyana take on Uzbekistan on Saturday (18 February) in their opening match of the 2023 Turkish Women’s Cup currently underway in Antalya, Turkey.
The South Africans arrived in that country on Wednesday (15 February) after much uncertainty about their travel following a devastating earthquake that ravaged Turkey and the neighbouring Syria.
But now the focus is on match.
With all the players in camp, the African champions were able to have two training sessions ahead of the fixture.
The Turkish Women’s Cup is being used to prepare for the upcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup which will take place in Australia and New Zealand – scheduled for 20 July to 20 August.
“We’re looking at some of the things like doing better in transition, being defensively organized and make sure that we stay compact and when we get an opportunity, we need to start being clinical. We also reminded players of some of the transitions that we played during the WAFCON, we want to make sure that we get it better. Those are some of the things we were working on, but time was a bit short though,” said Banyana Banyana coach Desiree Ellis on SAFA.net after the squad’s last training session ahead of the match.
“I think, however, that with the time that we had we did quite a lot and we hope it will be able to come into play in the match.”
This will be the first time South African and Uzbekistan meet.
“Given the fact that we’re still very early in the year, we tried to figure out a couple of things. We have got footage of them of the Central Asian Cup, we’ve got footage of them playing in November against Hungary and we also have footage of them against Slovenia, so we know quite a lot of them. We have analyzed them well but it’s up to us to execute – we still have to play our part to get the result,” added the former Banyana Banyana player.
“With this match, we are starting to prepare now on what we want to do with the World Cup, the fact is not everything is going to come through in the game but there are certain elements that we need to be better at – like the ones I spoke about. We need to make sure that that opportunities that we create that we put it away, because at the end of the day a solid defence wins you matches – if you don’t concede you always have an opportunity.”
Italy-based midfielder, Refiloe Jane, says as players they cannot downplay the importance of these matches.
“It’s very important to have these games as they’re going to be a good preparation for us going forward. We don’t want to spend more time apart as a team, the more time we have together the easier it is to prepare. With a mix of local and some overseas-based players it’s difficult to come together when there’s no FIFA break, and looking at the calendar of international matches that we need to play, we don’t have enough time to prepare. So, with the little that we get we need to maximize it and make sure that by the time we get to the big stage at least we have worked on a lot of things,” said the Sassuolo player.
“In addition to that, we also need to work as individuals when we get home to our clubs – we still need to put in a lot of effort so that when you come here (national team) the coaches just need to focus on the technical part of the sessions, the minimal stuff we can do in our own free time. we know that we don’t have enough time for preparation, so we’re trying to squeeze in as many things as possible so that by the time we get to the big stage we are ready.”
The former TUT and VUT player has also sympathized with the Turkish people for the challenges facing them.
Firstly, we are very honored and very humbled to get this preparation camp, you know how difficult it was to get here. Since we’ve arrived here in Turkey the reception has been very good from the locals and even at the hotel we are staying in, the staff has been good to us and the treatment is the same at training,” said Jane.
“We know the challenges that Turkey is facing at the moment, we sympathize with them, and we feel very grateful that they can still afford us the chance to be here and play this type of tournament and have this type of preparations for the journey ahead and we’re not taking that for granted. So far everything has been going very well and we feel very grateful towards the Turkish people for having us here in their home country despite what they’re facing.”
Banyana Banyana will face Slovenia on Tuesday, 21 February in their second match of the competition.
By Matlhomola Morake
