Bright Stars ready to sparkle against Djibouti
The 2023 Total Energies Africa Cup of Nations Qualifiers (AFCONQ) begins as South Sudan prepares to square off with Djibouti tomorrow in Egypt.
The Bright Stars have been training for the clash in Egypt since last week. The South Sudan Football Association (SSFA) revealed that the team is up to the test.
South Sudanese fans are upbeat about Wednesday’s game. They believe that the team will get it right this time after a sequence of bad results last year.
One of the veteran South Sudanese fans, Jacob Garang, argued that the national team is better than Djibouti and that there would be no excuse should the team fail to win such a game.
“Since I was a child, even when teams from Southern Sudan played teams from the northern part of the country, I have always supported our own Southerners, and when we became an independent country, I was the biggest fan of our team.”
He said despite the team’s poor performance in previous games, he is optimistic that they will deliver.
More hopes
“I have seen from the few recent matches that there is an improvement, so I hope that we will win this time because we also have players that are better than the guys that we are going to play against tomorrow,” Garang stressed.
For John Moga, every South Sudanese wants to see the national team win the games.
“I believe that if you ask South Sudanese about their expectations for the game against Djibouti, they will all reply that we need to win. Even Djibouti fans will [say the same thing] that their team has to win, but I need a win as a South Sudanese,” he added.
“However, because everyone is working hard to win, we humbly request that our players and coaches do us proud.
“It has been a long time since we celebrated something like [this] in our women’s [victory] against Sudan,” Moga stressed.
According to the FIFA rankings, both South Sudan and Djibouti are among the 12 less-ranked teams that will have to participate in the preliminary round of 2023 AFCON qualifiers before joining the other 42 highest-ranked teams that qualify directly for the group stage.
The 12 less-ranked teams (countries) are Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Gambia, South Sudan, Mauritius, Chad, Sao Tomé, Djibouti, Somalia, Seychelles, and Eritrea.
In addition, South Sudan is ranked highly among Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Gambia, and Mauritius in pot one (1), while Djibouti, Chad, São Tomé and Príncipe, Somalia, Seychelles, and Eritrea are among the countries involved in pot two (2).
The six highest-ranked teams (pot 1) were grouped against the six least ranked teams (pot 2), where the first leg will be played at the home of the lower-ranked teams. South Sudan’s Wednesday game, which is the first leg, is considered an away match as they are ranked higher than Djibouti.
The Bright Stars’ return game will be on March 27, 2022, in Kampala as a home game.
