Will South Africa be the first home nation to fail to advance past the first round of the World Cup?
No host nation has ever failed to advance past group stage in the long history of the World Cup.Ranked 81 in FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking ( below nations like Uganda, Cyprus, Montenegro, Bahrain, Canada etc ) and losing 8 of the last 9 matches ( including setbacks in international friendlies to Norway and Iceland ) South Africa has "great" chances to beat this record.
Bafana Bafana failed to qualify to African Cup of Nations which was the perfect opportunity to do some team building and test itself in competitive games against top african teams. Now they have to organize international friendlies in order to work itself into shape.
As a result of this chaotic state, the manager Santana was fired and replaced with Carlos Alberto Parreira who led Brazil win the World Cup in 1994. That has lead to Benni McCarthy's return to the national team.
Will the experience of the new manager and South Africa's all-time leading scorer in international play be an important boost for rebuilding the squad into a contender before the 2010 World Cup?
2 comments:
Hi there again....i think ..no ...i'm sure that South Africa's team will not pass even the group stage....they are week..and the new coach did not had the time to rebuild a squad that will have to play with the big names..like spain, holland, italy, brazil or argentina....i'm very sorry that our national team failed to qualify to the tournament...but there is hope for the next tournament...
9 February 2010 at 13:43see you...man..
At this moment things don't look very well for them and I would give them more chances not to qualify but with a host nation you never know.
9 February 2010 at 14:10Their hopes could come from the big support they will get from crowd and they might also benefit from some good referees decisions. Their group is not very tough with France, Mexico and Uruguay and, if they get a good result in the first match against Mexico, everything can happen.
One interesting fact about their group is that in 1966 England , the host nation had exactly the same group with France, Mexico, and Uruguay. But I guess the coincidence stops here as England became the world champions at that edition.
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