South African U17 women’s national team coach Ntombifuthi Khumalo has been quietly preparing her players ahead of their FIFA U17 Women’s World Cup qualifier against Nigeria at Lucas Moripe Stadium on Saturday, and she said they are completely focused on their goal.
The South Africans have their eye on a third FIFA U17 Women’s World Cup and Khumalo said they have been hard at work in camp since this past weekend.
“We want to go to the World Cup. Our plan is to make sure that after each and every 15-minute period, we introduce how we defend, so that we don’t concede,” she said.
“We will play high and attack, because at the end of the day, we can’t win the game if we don’t try to create opportunities to score. But the main focus is to make sure we don’t concede, and we reinforce our defense. We did most of the tactical work, and it was on how we defend, and try to press high. We saw them when they played in the tournament in January, how they are good when they attacked, so we were working on it. But so far, I’m happy about the girls.”
