Bafana led for 78 minutes only for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations champions to score two quickfire goals and ensure it was a sweet return for former Orlando Pirates coach Milutin Sredojevic to South African shores.
Foster was replaced after being bumped heavily in the back in an aerial duel in just the first minute of the game. And Ntseki said Bafana 'played like a team with no confidence' in the first-half, but did note the second-half improvement.
"If you lose a player in the second minute of the game, it messes up everything. I think it was a huge setback to lose Lyle in the beginning of the game and the plan was not to make substitutions as early as we did," Ntseki told SABC1.
"That did not give us the rhythm that we were looking for. We kept on giving the ball away. In the first half, we played like a team with no confidence and that's what really killed the momentum in the team. We gave away too many corner kicks early in the game.
"I tried to push them, to give them the confidence and the belief. We spoke about it at half-time, we addressed the issues we saw in the first half. And that's why when we started in the second half, it was a better performance.
"When you concede two goals in a game like this in the second half, there are a lot of questions you need to ask yourself defensively. These are professionals. They are fully aware of those situations. We'll go back and look at the game itself and do the analysis and when we report for camp, we will be addressing those negative issues.
"I think it was good preparation. This is the game that for Micho was very important. He is at the bottom log. We are also trying to get to the top of the log. The question was; are the players going to be ready for the AFCON qualifiers next month? And I think they have answered those questions."
