By Kennedy Pwaspo.
The Head Coach of the Bafana Bafana of South Africa, Stuart Baxter, has revealed his team’s game plan ahead of tonight’s quarter-final cracker with the Super Eagles of Nigeria in the ongoing 2019 Africa Cup of Nation holding in Egypt.
Baxter, stated that his team will ensure Nigeria’s pointman man, Odion Ighalo who’s one of the tournament’s joint top scorer alongside Saido Mane (Senegal), Adam Ounas (Algeria) and Cedric Bakambu (DR Congo) is starved of the ball.
“We don’t make plans to stop individual players, rather we will do it as a team. We will find a way of stopping the ball from getting to him (Ighalo). It is up to our back four to do that.
“We’ll go into the game as we do every game. When we hit that balance between good organisation and still getting the ball in play and playing with pace‚ and closing people down at pace‚ and using the natural inherent ability and technique‚ we can give anybody on this continent a good game”, the Bafana Bafana coach said.
Both teams have a lot to play for having knocked out the defending champions and the host nation in the Round of 16.
Nigeria sent the defending champions Cameroon packing with a hard-fought 3-2 victory to progress to the quarter-final, while the South Africans stunned the host nation, Egypt 1-0 in front of over 70,000 Egyptian fans.
Nigeria will take on South Africa at the Cairo International Stadium tonight for a place in the semi-final.
The game will kick off at 8pm Nigerian time.
You can stream the live action on fuboTV.