20 June 2010

Paraguay beat Slovakia 2 nil, Italy drew 1-1 with the team from New Zealand known as the All Whites and Brazil demolished the Ivory Coast 1-1 in the matches that were played today.

The national Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Times elicited a response from previous President, international icon and revered South African, Mr. Nelson Mandela to the effect that the soccer team should make magic in their last group game and that all South Africans should continue with their fervent support of the team. Bafana Bafana is due to play France in their final group stage game. At present it looks like Uruguay and Mexico shall qualify from the Group A participants that includes France and South Africa as well.

South Africans are rather subdued about the team’s prospects since the 3-0 result at the hands of the Uruguay team. The computations have been spelt out. The team need to score heavily against France and hope that the match involving the Uruguayans and Mexicans ends lopsided with one team outscoring the other by many goals. All in all, a sizeable task. I get the impression that many of the world’s international media are in the act of patronising us by talking up the chances of the team qualifying for the second round.

There has been some discord in the French team with their player Nicholas Anelka being expelled from the team. He allegedly disagreed with French coach Domenich and had a war of words with the latter. This has cast a shadow over the prospects of the French team. France was one of the finalists in the last World Cup held in Germany. Who can forget the antics of French player Zinedine Zidane who head butted the Italian player in the finals, earning a red card send off for himself. The more discord there are in the French team, the greater the prospects of the South African team overcoming them in the game scheduled for Bloemfontein on Tuesday 22 June 2010. South Africa has never beaten France before.

There are even rumours of discord coming out of the South African team as well. It would be a miracle if South Africa does qualify. We are expected to be the first host country whose team exits the tournament after the first round of group matches. I am not certain that this is correct. I do recollect that Japan failed to make the second round when they co-hosted the World cup with South Korea. But my fellow countrymen live in hope that the unthinkable shall occur come Tuesday. 

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