SENEGAL AWAIT SIHLANGU

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.

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