The match against the Black Stars will be the new coach’s first real test in his reign at the helm of South Africa
South Africa coach Molefi Ntseki is anticipating a ‘strong and good’ game against Ghana when Bafana Bafana go toe to toe with the Black Stars in a 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier on November 10.
The national side begin their bid to qualify for Cameroon 2021 with a trip to Ghana for a Group C encounter, ahead of meetings with Sudan and either Mauritius or Sao Tome e Principe.
The match in Ghana will be new coach Ntseki’s first serious assignment as Bafana coach since he landed the job in August, and the coach is wary of the threat the Black Stars will pose.
“We know that Ghana are more like us in the sense that they are in a building phase. They have not been doing well as a national team but Ghana is a football country and we know that they can always be very strong and give you a good game,” Ntseki told Sport24.
“As of now, we might not know much about Sudan but by the time we play them we would have done our analysis and profiling of them as a team.
“We are looking for positive results in whatever we are doing and we are saying we have to do well and we will do well and qualify for Cameroon 2021.
“I think our group is a difficult one but, at the same time, we are giving ourselves an opportunity. We will do a proper profiling of Ghana and Sudan before we look into who the players are we want to bring in and which system we are going to deploy against those two opponents.”
As well as Afcon 2021, Ntseki has also set his sights on helping South Africa qualify for the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar.
“If we do well in Cameroon, it will give us a very positive platform for us to do well in the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers and competition,” the new man continued. “If you look at the current situation of the South African football landscape, we have a very good group of players who can easily be phased in and some of the players in the current Bafana Bafana squad might be phased out due to age, loss of form or injury.”
Bafana Bafana last qualified for a World Cup in 2002, ahead of hosting the tournament in 2010, and Ntseki is looking to end a 20-year failure to negotiate a qualifying campaign for the global tournament.
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