South Africa Football Fans

The manager of the South Africa national football team, Gordon Igesund, has been sacked from his post. The Association in South Africa made that announcement yesterday evening.

Igesund was given the charge of the South African team a couple of years back i.e. in June 2012. He was expected to guide the team to the Round of 4 in the 2013 Africa Cup and also to the 2014 World Cup finals, but, he couldn’t do either of that.

South Africa got beaten by Mali in the penalty shootouts in the quarter final round in the Africa Cup and they also failed to qualify for the third round of the CAF World Cup qualification after having secured only 11 points in their 6 matches in the second round.

So, considering all these things, people were already expecting that the South African association would not give a contract extension to Igesund and the same happened.
The chairman of the association, Mr. Danny Jordaan, had a meeting with Igesund in which he made the 57-year Old aware that he was going to be terminated from his position.

In the press conference in which Igesund’s sacking was announced, Jordaan also said that the hunt for the new manager would start pretty soon.

The chairman said, “We are going to look for a new man for the post pretty soon.”

The two men who are understood to be the strongest contenders to replace Igesund are Stephen Keshi (Nigeria) and Carlos Queiroz (Portugal). They are currently in charge of the national teams of Nigeria and Iran respectively and would be in Brazil in about 10 days’ time for the FIFA World Cup.

Keshi is a hugely respected manager in the African continent and many experts reckon that the chances of him grabbing the South Africa job are very high.

South Africa suffered a major setback in their hopes of qualifying for the next World Cup after they were beaten 5-0 by World Cup 2014 hopefuls Brazil. The national team has been steadily improving over the last five years, but this is a major setback for the team. It has also put to the future of manager Gordon Igesund in major doubt. Even before the match, it was heavily speculated that Igesund would be leaving the South African national team. Even though Igesund tried to avoid questions about his future in the post-match press conference, he stated that his future will be decided by the South African FA.

It was a brilliant performance from Brazil, who managed to score through goals from Neymar and Oscar. The Barcelona forward scored a hat-trick in the match, while the Chelsea midfielder got one for this account. Manchester City’s defensive midfielder Fernandinho completed the rout. Even though this was a disappointing result, Igesund felt that his team played extremely well over the 90 minutes. He says that the only disappointment was the final third where Brazil were much more clinical.

Brazil are the favourites to win the World Cup 2014, while South Africa have managed just one World Cup appearance. Brazil hold record with five trophies to their name.
“We played against a very, very good team. It wasn’t a bad performance, but they were just so much better than us.
Their decision-making in the last third was much better than ours. They were very clinical, especially Neymar – he was outstanding tonight. But at the end of the day there was a good lesson learned. A couple of youngsters got out onto the park and they will learn a lot from this,” said Igesund. South Africa’s next match will be against Australia towards the end of May.

Former South African player Isaac ‘Shakes’ Kungwane has said that he is sure that manager Gordon Igesund is about to lose his job due to the impatient nature of the national football Association. South Africa are known to part with their coaches very soon if results do not improve.

South Africa were recently unable to progress into the latter stages of the African Nations championship, which is a tournament held for the locally-based players. South Africa were expected to dominate in this tournament after the recent World Cup 2014 gave them a lot of confidence.

However, they could not even reached the knockout stages of this tournament. There have also been allegations that the manager tried to influence players with aspects like bonuses during the tournament. It is expected that Igesund will clear his name over these allegations. However, he may not be the South African manager for too long according to Kungwane. He has also criticised the quickfire policy of the football Association by saying that any manager needs time to implement his ideas.

South Africa also failed to do well at the 2010 World Cup despite being the host. Kungwane says that sacking managers alone is not the solution to the problem. He wants the youth coaches to change their mentality as well.

“There have been a lot of news headlines that he even tried to influence player bonuses, so I think it is going to be difficult for him to stay on. As we all know, Safa are trigger happy, so I don’t see him retaining his job. The problem is that we are so impatient. Even in our PSL [Premier Soccer League], we can’t play a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old because of the coaches in this country. They are so scared of losing that [player] they even resort to playing negative football,” said Kungwane.

South Africa’s national team manager Gordon Igesund has said that he is confident that his team will be able to get past Nigeria when the two sides meet each other in the African nations championship.

This tournament, which is held only for the local players, is a prestigious tournament in Africa. South Africa will head into this match leading the table with four points. However, their lead is mainly due to the better goal difference and they would want to take a win from this match in order to retain this spot in the table.

Mozambique are bottom of the table after having not taken any points so far. Nigeria’s national team won the African cup of nations recently, but it is thought that South Africa are stronger in this tournament due to the better quality of local players. Igesund says that he will not play for a draw in this match given the strength of the opponents. He has always taken to matches with a winning attitude and this will not change for this encounter.

Igesund also believes that previous history between the two teams does not account to anything for this encounter, which will be won or lost on the pitch.

Nigeria recently beat South Africa 2-0, but Igesund recalled that South Africa largely fielded a reserve team consisting of the locally based players.

“Playing for a draw is a dangerous thing for any team to do. You have to go out and play to win. My philosophy has always been to play to win. But when you start thinking about trying to play for a draw then you are doing the wrong thing and you end up making incorrect decisions. I cannot compromise my principles which are to win every match – if the other team scores three then you score four,” says Igesund.

South Africa managed one of the most famous victories in their history after achieving a 1-0 win over current world champions Spain. Spain were playing in the same stadium that saw them lift the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

However, they were not able to achieve success this time around after South Africa were quite impressive in the 1-0 win. This result was a feather in the cap for South Africa manager Gordon Igesund, who lavished praise on his team after this impressive win.

Spain were extremely poor throughout the match, as they failed to make clear-cut opportunities. South Africa were organised in defence, but they managed to take advantage of the break in the second half. Bernard Parker scored the only goal of the game just into the second-half. Even though this match was a friendly, South Africa managed stun the opposition with the defending and commitment. Igesund has said that the team executed the tactical instructions to perfection, which was the main reason behind the victory.

“It’s a fantastic result. You can’t take it away. I am so pleased that we played a friendly like this, because they are the world champions. You saw their attitude out on the field. They were fighting for their lives out there as well, and I’m just pleased that we were able to give the people something to think about going forward. Tonight, our game plan was fantastic. The players were fantastic. Those are the things which make a coach very happy,” Igesund said following the final whistle.

Spain have been known as the team that have a lot of possession, but that did not exactly translate into goals because South Africa were happy to let them have the ball in certain areas of the pitch. Igesund has revealed that he cannot be more happy as a coach.

South Africa were expected to comfortably win against Zimbabwe in a friendly match between the two teams, but manager Gordon Igesund was given a major shock after his team suffered a 2-1 defeat.

This defeat has sent shockwaves across Africa because South Africa are a popular team with a number of international players. Zimbabwe, meanwhile, are struggling a lot to establish themselves and create an identity for themselves. In order to blend some of the youngsters, Igesund decided to field a young line-up that included a number of local players.

Hence, they were not expected to be at their peak in this match, but Igesund would not have expected this kind of performance either. After a goalless first half, Musona gave Zimbabwe the lead in the second half in the 51st minute. The 90th minute goal from Malajila put the game beyond any doubt for Zimbabwe. Parker scored in injury time to give a consolation for South Africa. Despite this loss, though, Igesund feels that this match will be a good learning curve for the young players. He says that sometimes young players learn more when they are involved in a defeat rather than victories.

South Africa have been extremely inconsistent in recent months and this defeat is a testament to this fact.
“You can see this was a team that hasn’t played for two and a half months – they came from the COSAFA Cup. But that’s no excuse, sometimes it’s very good to lose games, because when you are trying out and you want to use players as development, and get them going, you want to see whether they can jump up to that level or not,” said the South African manager after the match. South Africa are two points off the table leaders Ethiopia in the World Cup qualifying group.

Ligue 1 seems to be in the sites of some of football’s richest investors these days and in many ways, it could go the same way as the English Premier League. Monaco and Paris Saint Germain are the currently the two big sides in Ligue 1, with clubs like Marseille and Lyon close behind. Lyon produced a 4-0 win on opening day despite Gomis being unavailable.

They seem to turnover a huge amount of talent at a low cost despite selling star names every season, and as much as a title challenge may be a bit beyond them, they could be a good Coupe de France bet at 9/1.

Lyon can be found at odds of around 25/1 at the online casino and sports betting markets for the title, whereas PSG are odds on at around 1/2. This will leave many people tempted to have a speculative bet on Monaco, who carry odds of up to 3/1. Any team with Falcao, Rodriguez and Moutinho in the ranks is a good bet at these odds. Some punters will prefer the win/lose/draw straight prediction markets, whereas others will prefer things like scores and scorers. New PSG acquisition Cavani could be a good bet to top the scoring charts, at odds of around 7/2 at the online casino. Monaco’s Falcao leads the betting at 7/4.

If this isn’t enough to make you want to place a bet, or you’re just not the betting type why not try football slots games. The online market is now massive and they have games focused solely on specific sports. One of the popular ones to try is Game On! It uses animals in a World Cup tournament so it’s sure to give you a few laugh. What more could any footie fan want? It’s a typical slot machine which is easy to play and sure to lift your spirits.

South Africa were recently knocked out of the Cosafa Cup by Zambia in a penalty shootout. After the match, South Africa manager Gordon Igesund stated that despite the loss his team at the better team in the match.

The match ended as a 0-0 draw after extra time. Hence, it needed penalties to bring out the winner between the two teams. Zambia came out of the lottery as the winners after a 5-3 score. Igesund made some significant changes to the starting line-up.

The team have just come on the back of a victory against Namibia, but the manager decided to freshen things up.
Igesund said after the match that he would like to congratulate Zambia, but he said that it never feels nice when a team is defeated on penalties. South Africa hit the post on two occasions during the match and they could have easily won it had they had more luck.

Despite an intimidating home crowd, South Africa’s problems were more down to finishing their opportunities according to the manager. The focus will now be shifting towards the World Cup qualifying. South Africa have an important World Cup qualifying match against Botswana coming up in September.
They will be preparing solely with the purpose of beating Botswana.

“I think it was a very good game of two teams having a go at each other. I would like to congratulate Zambia for the win, although it is never nice to lose on penalties. I thought we were better tonight and as you saw we hit the post twice. I am just disappointed for the boys because I would have loved to see them in the final because they gave their all. The crowd did not affect us because we stuck to our game plan and took the game to our opposition, it is just unfortunate we could not get the desired result,” said Igesund.

South African manager Gordon Igesund has said that he never refused to play at the Cosafa Cup, but he has refused to play a weakened team at this tournament. Officials from the South African Premier league and the football Association of the country will be meeting in order to decide on the players being released for this tournament.

It is understood that the Premier league clubs are not willing to allow their players to join up for the national team.

Igesund has clarified that he never refused to take part in the Cosafa Cup, but he has refused to do so with a weakened team because it would affect the teams ranking.

The tournament will be taking place in Zambia in July and it is a regional tournament. The football Association are expected to request around 12 players to be released for international duty. Due to the fact that South Africa are one of the seeded teams in the competition, they will be starting from the quarter-final stage. Igesund has said that there is a real danger of the team’s rankings plummeting if they go to this tournament with a weakened team and suffer a defeat.

The team is currently ranked 56th in the world by FIFA, and the results of Cosafa Cup are used in the calculation of the rankings.

“I have never said I don’t want to go to the Cosafa Cup. What I said was that we need to decide what team we send there. If I get 12 or 15 players of the current team, I’ll be happy. We will have to do our best there because the results might have huge repercussions. If we go there with a junior team and lose, people will say we are useless. We can’t go there as some development team – we have to go as Bafana,” said Igesund.

Cape Town has been proven to be a difficult place for South Africa, as the team has managed three consecutive defeats in the matches staged at this city.

However, manager Gordon Igesund has said that he has no problem with playing matches at Cape Town, and he is confident that his team will be able to get three points against Central African Republic. South Africa prepare for the crucial World Cup qualifying match against Central African Republic. The team comes on the back of a disappointing performance at the African cup of nations. After having played two matches, South Africa are fighting to finish top of group.

Igesund has also said that there is nothing to complain about the atmosphere generated by the home fans within the stadium. South Africa are under pressure to deliver three points from this match if they are to keep up with the likes of Ethiopia at the top of the table. Three points is also extremely essential because the next match will not be until June. South Africa take on both Central African Republic and Ethiopia in the space of one week, which could go a long way in determining the possibility of South Africa playing in their second World Cup.

“I don’t know what happened before, I just know that the last game we played here was against Norway and I was very happy with the way the team played. That was a friendly match and I was experimenting and trying things out, but I think we played fantastic against a team like Norway. I mean, we had 70 per cent possession … we had everything going for us that day. I don’t look what happened before. We will win this weekend and that’s all we have to do,” said the South African manager.