Sebastien Haller of Ivory Coast celebrates goal during the 2023 International football friendly between Ivory Coast and Morocco at the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium, Abidjan, Ivory Coast on 14 October 2023 ©Gavin Barker/BackpagePix
Monday Oct 16, 2023. 10:37
Ivory Coast will go head to head with South Africa in an international friendly match at the Stade Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Abidjan on Tuesday.
Kick-off is at 9:00 pm CAT.
The Elephants were held to a 1-1 draw by a resilient Morocco side at home in a friendly match on October 14 and the West African giants are undefeated in their last two games.
After losing to Zambia on June 17, Ivory Coast secured a win over Lesotho before drawing with Morocco and they will be looking to extend their unbeaten run against South Africa.
“Bafana Bafana and Ivory Coast, and all the teams are on the same level in Africa,” Ivory Coast head coach Jean Louis Gasset said on iDiski Times.
“We will try to play with the same team, a strong team to progress towards AFCON [and the FIFA World Cup qualifiers]. The match will be a good test for both teams.
“Bafana is a good team – I think that will play to push Ivory Coast to play well and to progress. But they also have an advantage of having played on Friday, they will have an extra day of rest than us.”
Meanwhile, South Africa were held to a 0-0 draw by Eswatini at home in a friendly match on October 13 as they stretched their unbeaten run to 10 matches under Hugo Broos.
Since losing to Morocco away in June 2022, Bafana Bafana have registered four draws and six victories under Broos who is excluded from the team’s COSAFA and CHAN matches.
“I want to see revenge. I want to see, certainly, a team with passion, a team with winning spirit again. There’s nothing that comes easily and in each and every game you have to give 100%,” South Africa head coach Hugo Broos said.
“And if things don’t go as you expected, then you have to fight and this is what we missed [against Eswatini on Friday]. You couldn’t believe your eyes when you saw them against Eswatini. There was no passion; we lost nearly every duel.
“We played far from our opponents and we were lucky they didn’t score because that could have been a disaster and that was not in our team, and let’s hope this is a wake-up call. We know it was bad but on Tuesday we must take our revenge against Ivory Coast.”
This will be the eighth meeting between Ivory Coast and South Africa across all competitions.
Bafana have the edge in this rivalry having recorded two wins compared to the Elephants’ one victory, while four games ended in a stalemate.
However, their last meeting ended in a 1-0 victory in favour of Ivory Coast in a 2019 AFCON Group D game played in Egypt on 24 June 2019.
Source link : https://africanfootball.com/news/809785/Ivory-Coast-take-aim-at-Bafana-Bafana
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Publish date : 2023-10-16 07:00:00
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