The importance of winning home matches has always been emphasised, yet it has continuously been a thorn in the side of the senior national team during qualification campaigns.
Pessimism has already begun to creep in amongst many South Africans following Bafana’s failure to beat group rivals Libya on home soil last month. Bafana forward Percy Tau says there is no need to panic over the possibility of failing to qualify for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations.
However, Tau insists that after two games the situation is far from dire and all that matters is a qualification to the final tournament in Cameroon, no matter when or how it is done.“I think it’s still early to talk [about the group situation]. There’s still four matches to be played, and we are second on the log so there’s no problem there,” said Tau.
“I don’t see any problem, it’s just that we have to win our games. Even if we draw our games, we just have to do better and qualify. “All we need is to go to AFCON, and the group is very good for us to do that.”
With powerhouses Nigeria and Libya having already picked up convincing wins against Seychelles, expectations are for Bafana to collect six points from their back-to-back fixtures over the next five days.
When asked of the importance of having to do so, the former Mamelodi Sundowns star defended that expectations are what causes problems before highlighting that other results also dictate the requirements.
“That’s the problem – ‘we have to’. It’s a group, sometimes you have to be smart on how you see and analyse the group,” he pointed out.
“Also, in a group the results are influenced by other results from the other teams. We can’t always be putting pressure on ourselves and thinking too much about the whole situation.
“A draw is better than a loss [against Libya], so we’ve still got four points. We just have to do our best and make sure we put the country where it deserves to be.”
Source: KickOff
