Bafana Bafana arrived on schedule at 8pm on Wednesday night at Lagos’s Murtala Muhammad International Airport only to find they did not have a luxury bus to take them to their overnight Sheraton Hotel.

They had to make do with what at best can be described as three rustic 24-seater mini-buses.

The Bafana technical staff loading bags and equipment through windows into one bus‚ while the entourage occupied the other two‚ was an almost comical sight.

Coach Stuart Baxter's charges have trained this week‚ before their departure to meet Nigeria in Uyo in Saturday’s 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier‚ to work under pressure in confined spaces‚ then release the ball quickly on the counterattack.

They will train on Thursday afternoon after their flight to Uyo on the outer fields of the match venue‚ Godswill Akpabio International Stadium.

Before leaving‚ coach Stuart Baxter had his men working to react quickly in confined spaces‚ preparing for the pressure Nigeria will undoubtedly try to put the South Africans under in possession.

Baxter said this Nigerian team‚ a mixture of youth and experience‚ might be on the whole smaller physically than previous generations‚ but still like to play a high-tempo contact game.

“I think they’re a playing team. They’ve got a lot of players who want the ball into feet‚” Baxter said.

“They attack space because they’ve got speed (up-front).

"If they build up they will attack space in-between and behind our defenders in the last third.

“Maybe they don’t have the same extreme physical capabilities of the earlier Nigerian teams.

"But I think that they are still physical in their approach to the game.

“They want to press the ball immediately after they lose it.

"They want to get in your face.

"I’m sure that they want to drive the tempo of the game on.

“I’m hoping that there will be a bit of that physicality about it.

"Because then I think our mobility‚ and our speed and skill‚ will come to the fore.”

Some of Baxter’s training sessions have involved three teams keeping one-touch possession on volleyball-sized fields‚ in competition for the most touches.

Others saw players working to keep the ball in confined spaces‚ then releasing runners with cross-field passes.

It said much of the pressurising approach the new Bafana coach expects from the Super Eagles‚ though Baxter said SA have more than one gameplan lined up‚ depending on what Nigeria produce on the day under German coach Gernot Rohr.

“What we know is that they want to play a high tempo.

"That as soon as they lose the ball they immediately press.

"The same as (Liverpool manager) Jurgen Klopp’s ‘Gegenpressing’‚” the coach said.

“And we know that we’ve got to be good at getting out of that first pressure.

“If we do that‚ and the game opens slightly‚ then we have a chance to use our speed and mobility and hit them.

“And we may decide to press them really high.

"Or we may decide to drop off and create the space behind them for our quicker players to go into.

“It doesn’t really matter.

"But we’ve got to make sure that if we go‚ we go together.

"And if we stay‚ we stay together.

“And when we win the ball that we’re calm enough to get out of their pressure‚ and then use what we are good at.”

 - TMG Digital/TMG Sport