Ellis expecting a bigger crowd when Banyana host Brazil at Moses Mabhida

Going into their second friendly match with Brazil, Banyana Banyana coach Desiree Ellis is expecting to see a larger crowd at the Moses Mabhida Stadium on Monday.

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Banyana and Brazil meet for the second time after the two teams locked horns at the Orlando Stadium last Friday, with the Brazilians walking away as 3-0 winners in front of decent crowd at Soweto, but while Ellis was happy with the turn out, shewas expecting it to be better.

Having played at the Moses Mabhida Stadium before, the Banyana coach believes they will have huge number of fans to support the South African National women’s team as they try to get a positive result against the women’s Copa America champions.

“I think Moses Mabhida never disappointed, when we played in 2019 in our send-off game (going to the World Cup) against Jamaica we had a very good crowd and I think fans have been starved off football. So we are hoping the crowd comes out, we had a little bit of a crowd and it was very encouraging to get the support even though we couldn’t get a good result. The fans were happy with the performance,” said Ellis.

Banyana put up a good performance despite losing the tie to Brazil. Ellis says it is important to see the team continuing from where they left off in this game and work on improving their performance and for the team to be clinical in front of goal having created plenty of chances.

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“It is important to see what we can do better, especially defensively and in the final third. What we see that we were good at, we will do more of that, but there is not a lot of time. A high intensity game like this takes a lot from you, we have to make sure that the players are ready for the match on Monday,” said Ellis.

Both Banyana and Brazil are using the two friendly matches as part of their preparations for the 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup, which will be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.