Bafana Bafana boss Stuart Baxter believes his team are bang of playing at home.
Like the Gil Scott Heron song goes, “Home is where the hatred is”, Baxter believes fans come down hard on the team when they fail to win games on home soil.
And after the failure to beat 101st-ranked Libya in Durban on Saturday, the knives were out again as they missed the chance to go top of the standings in the 2019 Afcon qualifying Group E.
But Baxter defended his men’s performance against a well-drilled Mediterranean Knights side and blamed the pressure on his manne for their goalless draw.
He compared it to their shock losses to Cape Verde in their World Cup qualifiers.
The 65-year-old says: “My experiences in the two games against Cape Verde where I expected us to win, those are two examples of things not going according to plan.
“If you don’t have the basics in place, anxiety and panic sets in and then you play at a lower level than you should.
“When it doesn’t go according to plan, players know that you guys [the media] will hammer them.
“They know they will be embarrassed. They know they will lose points. They are aware of all of that. They are patriotic, and they worry about it.
“Real confidence comes from repeating something a lot and making sure that we can do it no matter who we are playing against and no matter the situation.
“We have to change our psyche a little bit. I don’t think it is easy to come in to the national camp and change that psyche and revive them within four or five days.”