Everyone will need to be on top of their game, not only the team but the supporters as well. The stadium must be filled to capacity and hopefully the team will deliver the desired result.
Bafana must not underestimate the West Africans despite their low position in Fifa rankings. There are no longer small teams or push-overs in today's international football. This is a must win game, I'm sure the team knows very well how hard it is to get results away from home, so they need to make sure that they use the home ground advantage by winning convincingly against Niger.
There is a strong possibility that Niger will come looking for a draw, so they will pack their defence and rely on counter-attacks to try and get a goal or two. Katlego Mphela's lightining pace will be vital upfront if we are to get behind Niger's defence. Bernard Parker will also need to rediscover the form he showed at the confederations cup. Our midfield must be even more creative if we want to breakdown a possibly resolute Niger defence, we will have to create as many goal scoring opportunities as we can, we will also need to see our midfielders coming up with a goal or two, Simphiwe Tshabalala is always a threat and a possible goal score, lets hope he will produce the magic this weekend.
Playing against a defensive team will require our wing-backs to come to the party and push forward as much as possible so that they can stretch the opposition defence and create space in the middle for our midfielders and strikers, but at the same time we must guard against quick counter-attacks.
Bafana Bafana knows the importance of winning this game, we don't want to see the repeat of what happened when we failed to qualify for the AFCON in Angola.
By Siphiwe Hlongwane
