Pitso Mosimane impressed as South Africa U23s fight back against Algeria

South Africa’s U23 side have come under the watch of Bafana Bafana head coach Pitso Mosimane after recovering from a goal down to beat Algeria 3-1 on Thursday.

The South Africans produced an improved second-half performance, with Quwan Plaatjies, Nhlanhla Gasa and Faiz Abraham all coming off the bench to score.

Mosimane said the senior national team were monitoring the progress of the U23 players and were encouraged by what they had seen.

“We saw the U23s, we watched the game and we are happy with what we saw, we are happy with the prospects,” Mosimane said, as reported by SAFA.net.

The match was led by assistant coach Karabo Mogudi after head coach Raymond Mdaka was absent because of a family bereavement.

Mogudi said the result demonstrated the quality within the squad, while acknowledging there was still room for improvement.

“This match proves that the talent that we have selected, I know we did not do enough, we’ll never do enough in football unfortunately, but I think the talent that we’ve selected right now has done the job and I think they can still do more,” he said.

The assistant coach challenged the players to continue developing and produce more on the pitch, insisting they had the potential to improve further.

“We’ll push them to do more, we know that they’ve got a higher ceiling, and they’ve got potential to maximize the outputs on the field of play,” Mogudi said.

“Holistically, a very good match but we’ll go back, analyze and see where we can improve.”