Siphiwe Tshabalala Wednesday confidently predicted that Bafana Bafana will go to Cairo and take down the Pharaohs in Sunday’s 2012 African Nations Cup qualifier (Cairo Military Stadium, kick off 8.30pm).
The Kaizer Chiefs winger decided to apply the principles of positive thinking, and backed his side to pick up all three points.
“It won’t be an easy game, we are playing Egypt away,” said Tshabalala.
“It will be a very tactical game. They are a good team, but the pressure is more on them because if they drop points, they won’t qualify for the Nations Cup.
“We can’t allow that to happen, to give them points. We are going there for maximum points and if we win, actually when we win, it will enhance our own chances of playing in the Nations Cup.”
Tshabalala feels Bafana are raring to go saying: “It has been a great 10 days of preparing,” he said.
“It has not been easy, we have been working very hard. So far so good, and I am very optimistic that whatever we have been doing in training is going to pay off in the game.”
Pitso Mosimane has the luxury of taking a fully fit 23-man squad, with captain Steven Pienaar now back in full training. Mosimane has certainly had a successful start to his 2012 qualifying campaign. Bafana currently sit on top of Group G with seven points from their opening three matches, and at the end of March beat the Pharaohs for the first time in a competitive international, 1-0 at Coca-Cola Park.
The defeat in Johannesburg has added to the crisis engulfing Egyptian football, with the national side rock bottom of the group with just a single point.
Egypt were a little undercooked for the game in Johannesburg because of the postponement of their domestic league. But now that the league has resumed, the Pharaohs are confident they will give a far better showing on Sunday.
And assistant coach Shawky Gharib has predicted that it is possible for Egypt to pull off a miracle and qualify for the Nations Cup.
“Egypt’s national team has got a great will and strength, and we will never surrender,” Gharib told cafonline.com. “Our players always show what they’ve got when they face situations like this. We will have no pressure as many may expect. That happened in the 2010 World Cup qualifiers – we were at the bottom, but we won all our games and went on to a decider with Algeria.”
Indeed, after a terrible start to World Cup 2010 qualifying, where they drew with Zambia and lost to Algeria in their opening two games, the Pharaohs recovered to win their next four, setting up a play-off against the Desert Foxes. Ultimately they lost that play-off, and Tshabalala clearly feels the same will happen on Sunday.