Botswana coach Morena Ramoreboli cut a disappointed but composed figure after his side’s narrow 1-0 defeat to Benin at AFCON 2025, a result that dented the Zebras’ hopes of reaching the knockout stage.
Ramoreboli felt the turning point came in the first half, when Botswana squandered a big opportunity and were immediately punished on the counter.
“In the first 45 minutes, we got one opportunity which I think we should have buried and unfortunately from the very same opportunity, we conceded the other side,” he reflected.
He admitted his team lost their cutting edge after the break, even though they saw more of the ball.
“The sad part about this game is that we were creating in the first half but in the second half after we tried to get more possession, we were doing that but we did not really get that penetration or create more opportunities.”
“It is unfortunate that this is a game of football that works on who scored more goals and who made more mistakes and in this situation we made one mistake which resulted in us conceding a goal.
“When you look at them, they played all match with just one corner kick and that simply means they were not really giving us problems in terms of how they wanted to attack us. The worst part is that their defender is man of the match and that simply says, as much as he is the one who scored a goal, they were defending and defending well and unfortunately we are on the losing end today.”
