Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos has revealed the key factor behind his side's failure to defeat Angola during Sunday's friendly international.
South Africa extended their unbeaten run to four matches on Sunday after being held to a 1-1 draw by Angola at the Mbombela Stadium on Sunday, with Zakhele Lepasa earning Bafana Bafana a share of the spoils after Ambrosini 'Zini' Salvador had opened the scoring.
The result came just four days after Broos' side recorded a 2-1 win over neighbours Mozambique and the Belgian tactician believes that fatigue played the biggest role in their failure to record back-to-back victories.
"First of all, I am not disappointed. If I am honest, I would have liked to have won today, but the same performance as Thursday was not possible today. We didn't play so good either," Broos told SAFA's media department.
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"I felt that there was a lack of determination and that players were not fresh enough. Maybe, all those games in the last 14 days played a role. So, the many games over the last two weeks played a role today. Even after Thursday's game, there were players complaining because of fatigue.
"I think we can accept that because if you see what they have done with the MTN8 semi-final and final, and the Carling Black Label Cup, and then the game on Thursday, you can expect that. I thought that putting some fresh players in the team would make that better, but no.
"In our game also, the way we were playing, we sometimes gave too much space to Angola and gave them time to receive the ball, so there were many things that were less better than Thursday.
"But we didn't lose, which is one good thing, secondly I think the result was correct. We played against a difficult opponent who played very good behind the ball, and on the breakout were very dangerous, but we did on Thursday in finding the solutions, we couldn't do today.
"I think you will agree with me that some players didn't achieve the level which they achieved, for example, on Thursday. Again, that could be a problem of fatigue and I can really understand that.
"If you see the programme of those guys, it can happen that today you are a little bit less fresh than normal. But I am satisfied with the camp. We played two games, two times against opponents who will be similar to Liberia in March, so it was a good test.
"I'm sure that what we showed in these two games, and in the games we played in September, that we will qualify for AFCON because we can play good an modern football. Today there was just an excuse of there being little lack of freshness."
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