Thursday, 23rd August 2007 at 3:00 pm

Bafana lose to world’s worst footballers

The Scottish press called them insipid, uninspired and ponderous; while the good news for Bafana is that they were talking about Scotland, the bad news is that Carlos Alberto Parreira’s first foray into Europe with his new team still ended in defeat. Scotland have generally oscillated between average and appalling over the last decade or so, and there’s no doubt they weren’t the best team on display on Wednesday night; still, results do count in the beautiful game…

Bafana had their chances, with Siyabonga Nomvete the greatest culprit, and Terror Fanteni missing a good opportunity late on; Scotland made the most of pretty much their only genuine opening, Kris Boyd ending a barren run to score the deciding goal. Plenty of positives for Parreira, who’s still very much feeling his way around the players open to him and the style best suited to the team; still, Feverpitcher can’t help feeling that a rare chance to win in Europe has been spurned - and the fact that it was to one of Europe’s more consistently awful teams doesn’t make the result any easier to swallow.