17 February 2011
South Africa’s Development Team is full of confidence as they prepare for their 2011 African Nations Championship quarterfinal with Algeria in Khartoum on Friday.
South Africa and Cameroon were the only two teams in the group stages of the tournament who won all their matches, and coach Simon Ngomane says his side will be ready for the Algerians.
The technical team has been hard at work planning for this big clash, Ngomane says.
We watched Algeria in their final group stage match against hosts Sudan and also managed to get tapes of their earlier matches in the tournament, they have very good players who are very competitive.
We will have to deal with their ultra-defensive approach to the game. They are very tactical and are also a hard working team. We cant afford to slip up, we have to be good at all times, use our superior speed and try to punish their errors.
We understand what we are here for and so do the players, we are very focused on our goal of doing well in this competition. I dont see us being complacent at this stage as these are knockout rounds so we cannot afford that behaviour. This stage is about honour and so we are looking for nothing but a win.
For us to get close to any silverware in this tournament we have to reach the semi-finals, there is no other way. We have done well up to this point but this is only the beginning of a serious challenge now. We have proven that we have the potential, now we need to see if we can raise the bar even further and gauge how much we have grown and progressed as a team, added Ngomane.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, Rwanda skipper Haruna Niyonzima says their run of three straight defeats in the group stages will hopefully be a learning curve for his players and help them improve their games.
This is the first time Rwanda is competing in such a competition, he said. Also there were a lot of problems with our preparations. It has been a great experience and we will go back and prepare on our mistakes.
His coach, the Ghanaian Sellas Tetteh, says scoring was his side’s problem, but that their overall play was good.
We played very well, combined beautifully with good passes, but putting the ball at the back of the net was always a problem. It has caused us a lot at this tournament, Tetteh says.
We are going to work on that before our next match in the qualifying rounds of the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations.
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