South Africa coach, Desiree Ellis, has expressed her disappointment at Banyana Banyana’s failure to qualify for the women’s football event at the Paris 2024 Olympics, PRIMANEWS Sports Extra reports.
Banyana will miss their second consecutive Olympics after the reigning African champions were held to a goalless draw in the second leg of their African Women’s Olympic qualifying playoffs on Tuesday at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria.
The draw saw the nine-time Africans champions advance 1-0 on aggregate.
Ellis also blamed her team’s poor start and formation for their Olympic miss.
“We knew that coming into this game we needed to score,” Ellis said after the game.
“We also knew that we needed to score as early as possible because the longer the game went on, we became desperate. We didn’t start well, we changed the formation slightly because we needed to score,” said Ellis.
“We did not go forward as much as we wanted to in the first half, made a couple of changes in the second half and threw the kitchen sink at them. Unfortunately that elusive goal did not go in and for that we are very disappointed.”
Ellis’s team will now have to focus on the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations where they are the defending champions later this year.
Following their success, Nigeria will join Group C in the women’s soccer competition at the Games – their first Olympic appearance since Beijing in 2008. They will be alongside world champions Spain, Japan and Brazil.
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