Bafana to face Ivory Coast

Bafana Bafana’s opponents for the Nelson Mandela Challenge at Mbombela Stadium, have finally been elected.

The West African giants, Ivory Coast, also known as Les Elephants (The Elephants) will face Bafana Bafana on Sunday November 30 at 15:00, and are expected to bring some of their finest players.

This was confirmed by the South African Football Association (Safa)’s head of communications, Dominic Chimhavi, who said even though the fixture is not on the Fifa calendar, both teams will let their strongest players compete.

“We have spoken to the Federation of Ivorian Football (Fif) to recruit their best team for this occasion, and we can only hope that the citizens of Mpuma-langa and its surroundings will be equally ready to support this game.

“We don’t have any doubts that the province has thecapability to host a game of magnitude and we know that soccer lovers will not disappoint either,” said Chimhavi.

Since this fixture is held in honour of a great statesman and global leader, Nelson Mandela, the Mbombela Municipality’s mayoral committee member, Zayd Boroko, said the entire world would be watching the province and therefore appealed for support.

Mpumalanga News initially reported that Ivory Coast were the favourites to play here but last week reports suggested that Iran were eager to compete.

The last time these two teams squared off against each other was in the Nelson Mandela Challenge on November 12, 2011 at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth, where the score was finalised as 1-1, and the trophy shared.

After an impressive run Bafana Bafana would certainly want to use this game as a warm-up ahead of the 2015 African Cup of Nations to be hosted at Equatorial Guinea.

“This match is important to us in more ways than one. First we celebrate our 20th anniversary since we gained freedom and also observe the first anniversary since Mandela passed away. So we owe it to him to come and fill up the stadium,” said Boroko.

The stadium, through Mthuthuzeli Qamba, is ready to host this important event and said tickets were already selling. Qamba appealed to local soccer supporters to buy tickets early.