Bafana Bafana received two red cards and had goalkeeper Ronwen Williams to thank for keeping the score down as they battled with the movement of Mexico and the pace of the game.
Their attempts to play out from the back were dangerous and ill-advised, and led to the opening goal for the hosts as Williams passed to midfielder Yaya Sithole, who lost possession on the edge of his box.
Captain Williams says they will take the lessons from this game into their second match against the Czech Republic on Thursday next week in Atlanta, and know they have to learn fast.
“You don’t want to concede in the first 20 minutes, and that’s exactly what happened,” Williams said. “We wanted to settle the nerves, the anxiety, but obviously, at this level, you make a mistake, they punish you. We got into the game, caught them on the break, but our final passes let us down.
“There are lots of lessons to take, I am proud of the boys, the effort, they didn’t stop, they kept fighting. There are a lot of lessons we can take from this, we need to analyse our mistakes and not give up because there are still two games to play."
Coach Hugo Broos has come under fire for a tactical change to three central defenders and two strikers up front, a formation Bafana have never used in their five years under him.
It was an odd time to introduce it, but Williams backed the plans of the coach.
"Most of the games Mexico played in the last year they played with a back five as well,” he said. “We wanted to go with the same approach but have an extra number in the midfield.
“They obviously changed and came with a back four, we had a good game plan but we made that mistake in the first half and that allowed them to get on the front foot."
Former national team goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune, who was sent off against Uruguay in 2010, says Broos got his tactics wrong.
“It’s not the result we were expecting and the performance, of course,” he told SABC. “The guys could’ve done better. But I think coach Hugo Broos started negatively, the way we started playing, the formation.
“Towards the dying minutes of the game when he put in (Evidence) Makgopa, I think it’s exactly how we should’ve started because we were playing with two strikers, a pacy striker and a tall striker.
“If we had started with Makgopa, those flick-ons, I think (Iqraam) Rayners would’ve had chances to run behind the defence and keep the goalkeeper busy, because the keeper only made that one save from (Mbekezeli) Mbokazi in the first half and the rest he was watching.”
