Bafana can qualify for WC – Igesund

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Bafana Bafana coach Gordon Igesund has to take his side to the semi-finals of Afcon 2013 and qualify for the 2014 World Cup.

New national football coach Gordon Igesund is confident Bafana Bafana will book their place at the 2014 Fifa World Cup, despite picking up only two points in their first two qualifying matches.

“At the moment we’re sitting in a difficult position – we’ve lost four points – but I honestly still believe we can qualify,” Igesund said on Thursday at The New Age business briefing in Sandton.

Igesund was appointed last week as a replacement for Pitso Mosimane after a string of poor results, including successive qualifying-round draws against Ethiopia and Botswana.

While he admitted the players had lost confidence in their ability to score goals, Igesund believed they could achieve the lofty targets set by the SA Football Association (Safa).

He was mandated by Safa to take the national team to the World Cup in Brazil, and to reach the semi-finals of next year’s Africa Cup of Nations, to be hosted by South Africa.

“The players need more confidence, but I know we can go on and win things,” Igesund said.

“We need to bring African flair back into our game and play winning football. We also need national support. Bafana Bafana is an asset to South Africa and we all need to pull together.

“If we do these things we can be very successful. It will be a tough task, but we can do it.” Igesund believed the national team had plenty of potential, but they needed to identify their strengths and use them to their advantage.

“We have skill and agility which a lot of other countries don’t have,” he said.

“We need to identify our own style of football.”

Safa CEO Robin Petersen, meanwhile, said the governing body aimed to raise the standard of the game throughout the country. They had set a target at a recent symposium to have all national teams – including women and age groups teams – ranked among the best on the continent.

“We need to be consistently in the top three in Africa and the top 20 in the world,” Petersen said.

“If we can do that, not only with Bafana Bafana, but with all our teams, we believe at Safa we will have done our job.” – Sapa