Times Of Swaziland: SENEGAL AWAIT SIHLANGU

SENEGAL AWAIT SIHLANGU
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Ntokozo Magongo on 15/06/2022 08:34:00


MBABANE – Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) champions Senegal await Sihlangu in
the quarterfinals of the COSAFA Cup if the latter survive a tough group.
The country’s national soccer outfit were yesterday drawn in group B that
comprises Lesotho, Malawi and Mauritius. The winner of the group will face the
‘The Lions of Teranga’, as Senegal are effectively known, in the
quarterfinals. Senegal squad include want away Liverpool sensation forward Sadio
Mane, Italy’s Napoli defender Kalidou Koulibaly, Chelsea goalkeeper Edouard
Mendy and PSG Ismaila Sarr, among others.
The tournament gets underway from July 5 this year with the finals on the 17th,
after the draw was conducted at the iconic Moses Mabhida Stadium in host city
Durban yesterday.
If the Dominic Kunene-led side thrive to the quarterfinals, they will be facing
Senegal for the fourth time in four years. They had played twice in the 2022
AFCON Group stage qualifiers, with Senegal emerging 4-1 victors on November 17,
2019 here at home before Sihlangu forced a surprise 1-all draw away in Dakar on
March 30, 2021.
Their last meeting with Senegal, who were without their stars, was in last
year’s Council of Southern African Football Associations (COSAFA) semifinals
where Senegal advanced to the finals with a 3-0 win on penalties after a 2-all
draw in regulation time.
Favourites
Sihlangu who are in a tricky group face another tough task as they are featured
against 2022 AFCON surprise package Malawi who are favourites in the group. The
‘Flames of Malawi’ were eliminated in the last 16 of the AFCON early this
year. Meanwhile, Sihlangu last defeated Lesotho 3-1 last year in the group
stages and they settled to a 2-all draw in their last meeting against Mauritius
in 2019 in the same tournament. They last played Malawi in the COSAFA Cup in the
2007 edition where Sihlangu were 1-0 victors.
Sihlangu Coach Dominic Kunene, who will be leading the team to the tournament
for the third time, said it was a tough draw with no easy opponent. He said
despite that the group included Malawi who are from the AFCON held in Cameroon,
he could not underestimate the duo of Lesotho and Mauritius. “We are now
drafting the programme and it will be released soon on how we are going to
prepare. We have to be at our best and make no mistakes as we are facing strong
opponents who also have ambitions,” he said.
According to cosafa.com, Madagascar will face the Brave Warriors of Namibia in
the third quarterfinals, while five-time winners Zambia tackle the winner of
Group A, which contains Angola, Comoros, Seychelles and Botswana in what is
likely to be a hotly-contested pool. The winners of the quarterfinals will
advance to the semifinal round, while the losers will drop into the Plate
competition and ensure they do have further matches to fine-tune for the
upcoming African Nations Championship and Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
Decider
Durban will host the competition for the second time  and it has been the
perfect stage for the 2019 event that was won by Zambia as they defeated
Botswana in the decider.
South Africa and Zambia will hope to join Zimbabwe on six tournament wins this
year having each won five. Angola (three) and Namibia (one) are the only other
winners of the regional showpiece event. Mozambique, Malawi and Botswana have
all twice been finalists, but ended up on the losing side on both occasions.