SHOOT: The crowd relished this victory, but so far Bafana Bafana have simply played according to their rankings. Fifa ranks them 72nd in the world, 5 ahead of Iraq (who held them to draw on Sunday) and 10 places above New Zealand.
South Africa had to win this match against the All Whites, and also, they really should have beaten a team that on paper ought to be the inferior side.
From the get go Bafana dominated, and the score line could easily have been 5-0 or worse if they'd gotten all their ducks in a row. Bafana's performance was erratic, fluctuating between the sublime, to the ridiculous, to patently horrible. There were a few instances where players made wild swipes at the ball in front of goal.
There was also plenty of straying offside. If Bafana were less than impressive at times, New Zealand were not even luke warm. In the 2nd half they played with better urgency, but only lobbed two slightly threatening shots at the Bafana goalkeeper. Two Santana's credit, Bafana attacked the New Zealand constantly, and it paid off. They used a lot of 1-2 combinations which wrong footed their opponents, but quite often they wrong footed themselves.
Bernard Parker scored two goals, many more were fluffed. Steven Pienaar looked dangerous, creating space, but almost all the strikers blew hot and cold when it came to shooting for goal.
New Zealand's Chris Killen - where was he? Smoking grass? Did he touch the ball in the match?
From here South Africa's take on Spain. Ranked number 1 in the world. That Spain beat New Zealand just 1-0 will give Bafanan Bafana a lot of false confidence. South Africa have a huge amount of work to do if they intend to stick around at the 2010 World Cup. Their 72 world ranking is telling, and they need to do a lot now to up their game.
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