Head coach of the senior national team of South Africa Hugo Broos says his team has switched their attention to the world cup qualifiers which will resume in June as the next stage of their development, OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
Later today they will take on Congo Dr in the third place playoff of the Africa Cup of Nations but the coach is looking beyond the game and has his sight on the world cup qualifiers, where they will take on Nigeria, the team that stopped them from reaching the final of the AFCON.
Grouped alongside Rwanda, Benin Republic, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Nigeria. South Africa are currently second behind group leaders Rwanda and will resume the race to be at the tournament in June with a game away to Nigeria in Uyo.
Broos is already looking at that game as the first step towards their dream of qualifying for the world cup and says they hope to pip Nigeria, who are the favourite to make it from the group using their experience at the AFCON.
“There is Nigeria, I think it’s normal you know that this will be the team to best but after Wednesday we know that we can beat them so this AFCON made us stronger and I said already in the past that South Africa need friendly games against the big teams. That is where you learn something so those six teams we played here on this level helped us a lot and make our chances of qualifying for the World Cup bigger”, he said ahead of today’s game against Congo DR.
”This is now where we have to focus on. We have to focus to be at the World Cup, so after twenty something years we have the semi final of the AFCON, the next focus should be qualifying for World Cup in 2026.
“It will not be easy okay because I am talking about Nigeria, there also Zimbabwe , I am talking also about Benin Republic, we lost to Rwanda so that means also this AFCON shows it that little countries make a lot of progression.So it’s not an easy group but it gives us much confidence that we can be first in our group after this AFCON”.
Mohammed Mowiz Suleiman
