We can't afford to be complacent

There are two really tough and important FIFA World Cup matches coming up - against Lesotho on Friday and Nigeria on Tuesday.

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I think we should not get ahead of ourselves and start counting our chickens before they hatch. We must take one game at a time, deal with it and then look at our next opponents. I don’t want us to find ourselves in a situation where, let’s say on Friday, we talk about the Nigeria game that we still have to play on Tuesday. I think it’s best that we talk about the Lesotho game right now. We must make sure that we don’t underestimate them. I've watched them in the COSAFA Championships and was impressed because they are doing very well. We must not go to that game thinking we will get an obvious three points; we will have to work for those points. It’s going to be hard, but we have to fight until the end. So, in terms of Bafana Bafana’s approach, they should make sure they go all out against Lesotho so that, irrespective of what happens off the field, they'd be on the safe side. Collecting three points in every game is going to be very important. The other countries in our group, the likes of Rwanda, Benin, Nigeria, Lesotho and Zimbabwe, are no walkovers and we can’t afford to be complacent and say we will qualify for the World Cup with ease, and that’s why I’ve stressed the importance of taking it one match at a time. The fact that we are on top of the group standings doesn’t mean we will remain there at the end of the qualifiers. We will have to work very hard to make sure we keep that position because, at the end of the day, we wouldn't want to play for a draw. We don’t know how many points the second-placed side will collect, so we have to fight for maximum points in every game we play.

On the Bafana Bafana squad