South Africa walked into a lion's den on Tuesday night in what was only supposed to a be a friendly warm-up match - and went home with coach Carlos Queiroz suffering his first defeat since taking over as Bafana Bafana coach last September.

Some 30,000 watched the tiny mountain kingdom win 1-0 in a passionate match at the Sesotho stadium against a makeshift South African side that, nevertheless, was not short of international experience.

Lesotho striker Masupha Majara, a part-time footballer and a soldier by trade, scored a brilliant late free kick to give Lesotho their victory, although they had to sweat through a bizarre 10 minutes of stoppage time at the end of the game before their victory was secured.

It was a first-ever win for the kingdom against the country that completely surrounds them and set off delirious celebrations among the home crowd.

South Africa had won all three previous encounters against Likoena (the Crocodiles), as Lesotho are nicknamed, including two wins in Maseru.

Goal denied

The hastily-arranged friendly replaced South Africa's World Cup qualifier with Guinea, which was to have been played last Saturday but which was cancelled after Guinea were suspended by FIFA.

Lesotho were unlucky not to have gone ahead in the first half, but had a legitimate-looking goal disallowed when the linesman ruled the ball had crept in through the side netting.

South Africa played an experimental side without any of their foreign-based players but started with just two uncapped players - defender Thabang Molefe and striker Abram Raselemane.

Whole scale changes were made in the second-half with six substitutes being used by Queiroz.

Low profile game

The defeat was the first for the Portuguese trainer, whose record is now three wins in six games with two draws and now a defeat.

Ironically, the match drew little interest in South Africa despite the South African Football Association declaring it a proper international.

All three national TV channels turned down the chance to broadcast the match and most newspapers did not send reporters to cover the game.