SA development team working hard to face Algeria

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Pretoria - The South African Development Team is hard at work ahead of their crucial African Nations Championship (CHAN) quarter-final match against Algerian on Friday in Sudan.

The match will be played at the Khartoum Stadium - kick off is at 5pm local Sudan time (4pm South African time).

South Africa and Cameroon are the only two teams in the tournament who won all their group stage matches and will be hoping to continue with their impressive record when they face the North Africans on Friday.

Head Coach of the South African Development Team, Simon Ngomane, said his side was expecting a tough encounter against the Algerians.

"The technical team has been hard at work planning for this big clash. We watched Algeria in their final group stage match against hosts Sudan and also managed to get tapes of their earlier matches in the tournament, they have very good players who are very competitive.

"We will have to deal with their ultra-defensive approach to the game. They are very tactical and are also a hard working team. We can't afford to slip up, we have to be good at all times, use our superior speed and try to punish their errors," he said.

The coach is not worried about complacency after his side defeated Ghana, Niger and Zimbabwe in the group stages.

"We understand what we are here for and so do the players, we are very focused on our goal of doing well in this competition. I don't see us being complacent at this stage as these are knock-out rounds, so we cannot afford that behaviour.

"This stage is about honour and so we are looking for nothing, but a win. For us to get close to any silverware in this tournament we have to reach the quarterfinals there is no other way.

"We have done well up to this point, but this is only the beginning of a serious challenge now. We have proven that we have the potential, now we need to see if we can raise the bar even further and gauge how much we have grown and progressed as a team," he said.