The moment of truth is rapidly closing in on Bafana Bafana, when they will finally get the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations underway with the much-anticipated clash against Cape Verde Islands at the National Stadium at 18:00. Having failed to win neither of their last two preparatory matches against Norway and Algeria, perhaps the most relevant question is whether Bafana Bafana have saved the best for last. Do they have a card up their sleeve?
Cape Verde, on the other hand, may be rookies in the tournament, but they can never be underestimated. They have nothing to lose. Competing in the tournament is already an achievement for them. But nonetheless, they are very well prepared having played together for over a year. Despite their low profile, they have proved to have what it takes to rise to occasions and be giant-killers when they eliminated powerhouse name, Cameroon en route to South Africa. To top it all they are still the highest ranked team on the Fifa world rankings (70th), in the group with Bafana Bafana being the lowest on 85th position.
Ahead of the two friendly matches, Bafana Bafana head coach, Gordon Igesund stressed that results were not important. According to Igesund, trying combinations, lifting the team’s morale and instilling some tactical understanding in the team was top of his priority list. While some viewed that as an excuse in case he lost the matches, it does makes sense, to an extent that, with the little time that he had to prepare the team, and the odds stacked against the host team, he couldn’t play his cards openly and expose himself to his calculative and better prepared oppositions. If so, Igesund might have been an astute manager well-posed to catch the Blue Sharks by surprise?
Composure, creativity, skill, short passing game, with lots of mobility and playing as a unit are SA’s best attributes and are what can get Igesund’s boys to hit the ground running.
But that is just one way of looking at it. His decision to play with one striker to give out wrong information to his opposition and unleash twin strikers on the day of the match, among some of his tactical moves he had banked in the build-up matches could still backfire. Explaining tactics to players at a training sessions and implementing them in a game situation are too different things. He will need to cross his fingers and hope that from the onset the execution of those tactics do play out very well. Failure to get it right, coupled with the expectations weighing heavily on his team on such a big stage, could have some serious psychological repercussions on the players.
What is worrying is that Bafana Bafana have, until so far, not played their best football, with lots of skills, creativity in the midfield to unlock defences, let alone score goals. Against Norway, the team stuck to the counter-productive football of playing the ball up in the air and even when Norway’s taller players dealt with those aerial balls very easy Bafana still never changed their approach – which begs the question, is the team capable of adjusting their tactical approach depending on the game situation?
Cape Verde are not just physically stronger than the Bafana players, they also do make use of skill and creativity and play as a unit. Defensively, they are very strong, from the midfield, which was also evident when they played to a goalless draw with Nigeria just over a week ago. This means the Bafana players will need to outplay themselves in their attack if they are to unlock the Blue Sharks’s defence to get goals.
Composure, creativity, skill, short passing game, with lots of mobility and playing as a unit are SA’s best attributes and are what can get Igesund’s boys to hit the ground running. But until so far, they have not looked to have those traits in their game. But perhaps, Igesund does have a very good card up his sleeve after all.
NB: Event though it has been more than six years since the last two teams met and circumstances have changed, Bafana can bank on the fact that the last time the two teams played, in 2006, South Africa beat the Islanders home and away in the 2006 Fifa World Cup.
Players that could turn on the magic on:
South Africa: Thulani Serero, Reneilwe Letsholonyane
Cape Verde: Ryan Mendes, Fernando “Nando” Neves, Jorge Djaniny
– By Sipho Kekana
