Bafana ready for Norway clash
Bafana Bafana completed their preparations ahead of their international friendly match against Norway.
The match will take place on Tuesday at the Cape Town Stadium.
Kickoff is at 8:30pm. Follow the action live on SS4 and SSHD4 as well as live streaming at supersport.com.
This will be Bafana Bafana’s first match since the announcement of the 23-man squad.
South Africa had an intensive training session under the watchful eye of head coach Gordon Igesund and his technical team.
Dean Furman was rested for the final session on Monday. The midfielder joined camp on Sunday after playing in an third round FA Cup tie for his club Oldham Athletic in England.
The coach will select from the 22 available players who have all been given a clean bill of health.
“Dean won't get a run as he has played a lot of games for his club in a short space of time, so we will rest him for tomorrow’s match because the bigger picture is the Orange Africa Cup of Nations 2013 tournament starting in less than two weeks,” said Igesund.
The head coach is confident that his players will do well against the 24th ranked Norway who arrived in South Africa on Friday night.
The two countries have met twice before with South Africa winning one and Norway winning the other.
“We want to win tomorrow night, but we are more focussed on the tournament so I won’t be showing my hand fully as to which team will run out for the tournament and also I don’t want players getting injured before we begin our campaign.
We need a complete turnaround from the last six matches we played where I was looking at players, now I have been able to spend some time with them and we are getting somewhere. I want to excite people with our play, and I want the players to play with flair, pace and passion and we can only do that when we have the crowd behind us,” added the coach.
SA v Norway – head to head
28 March 2009
Royal Bafokeng Sport Palace (Phokeng, near Rustenburg)
Bafana won 2-1
(Parker 18’, Tshabalala 90’, Morten Pedersen 27’)
10 October 2009
Ullevaal Stadion, Oslo
Norway won 1-0
(Kjetil Waehler 48’)
Bafana Bafana depart for Johannesburg on Wednesday in the morning to prepare for their second international friendly match of the year against Algeria which will be played at the Orlando Stadium on Saturday.
