Bafana to meet Group A winners Tanzania in Cosafa Cup quarterfinal
Image: Kabiru Abubakar/Gallo Images
Tanzania will be South Africa’s opponents in the Cosafa Cup at the weekend after squeezing through by the narrowest of margins into the last eight on Thursday night.
The east Africans are guests at the annual Southern African championship – filling in for the Comoros Islands‚ who did not enter – and have brought virtually a full strength national team‚ except for their Belgian-based star striker Mbwana Samatta.
They do have Thomas Ulimwengu‚ who is formerly of TP Mazembe and plays now in Sweden‚ but has been hampered this week by an ankle injury.
But he did play on Thursday as Tanzania had to come from behind to draw 1-1 with Mauritius at the Moruleng Stadium in their final game to win Group A – by a single goal from Angola.
The two countries ended on five points each but Tanzania had a better goal difference and so now meet the South Africans‚ who are the defending champions‚ at Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace on Sunday (kickoff: 5pm)
South Africa are among the top six seeds for the competition who only enter at the quarterfinal stage.
Tanzania had to go through three group games in six days and are likely to be relatively tired by the time they take on Stuart Baxter’s pick-up team.
Balancing that‚ the teams who play the group stage often benefit from the match practice they have enjoyed against the incative sides who have had byes to the quarters.
- TimesLIVE