Super Sunday for African football fans

by Staff Reporter

Sunday Oct 13, 2019. 08:00

Sunday 13 October 2019 promises an action-packed programme for African football fans, with Nigeria and South Africa in high-profile friendlies, while the preliminary round of qualification for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations will also be completed.

The Super Eagles have the most glittering match of the day, as they take on five-time world champions Brazil in a friendly in Singapore.

A Selecao held Senegal to a 1-1 draw on Thursday and Gernot Rohr’s Nigeria will be looking to go one step further, though Brazilian midfielder Casemiro has warned that his team will improve for the next game.

“On Sunday, we’ve another match to show our quality, to show why we are in the national team. We will analyse our match against Senegal to see what we need to improve on,” explained the Real Madrid player.

South Africa will then enter a new era under coach Molefi Ntseki when they take on Mali in the annual Nelson Mandela Challenge, with the match set to be held in Port Elizabeth in the early afternoon.

Bafana Bafana will be hoping to build on the foundation laid by former manager Stuart Baxter, who took the team to the quarterfinals of the AFCON earlier this year before resigning his post, but the Eagles pose a significant threat to Ntseki’s hopes of beginning his tenure with a victory.

Attention will then turn to competitive action, with the four return legs for the preliminary round of 2021 AFCON qualifiers.

Sao Tome e Principe look set to overcome Mauritius at the their national stadium, having claimed a stunning 3-1 away win in the first leg in Belle Vue Harel last Wednesday, while Gambia will fancy their chances of defeating Djibouti in Bakau after a 1-1 draw in their away leg.

Liberia and South Sudan will both be looking to defend narrow aggregate leads in their respective away games against Chad (1-0) in N’Djamena and the Seychelles (2-1) in Victoria.

The four aggregate winners will completed the 48-team field for the group stage of the 2021 AFCON qualifiers.

In addition, Sunday also sees all-African friendlies such as Kenya v Mozambique, Ivory Coast v DR Congo, Ethiopia v Uganda, Benin v Guinea-Bissua and Equatorial Guinea v Togo.