Bafana Bafana vice-captain Percy Tau has revealed why he believes the Morocco clash will be “better” than their previous AFCON group-stage matches.
South Africa will face Morocco on Tuesday night in what will be the last tie of the Round of 16 stage which began on Saturday. Nigeria, Angola, DR Congo and Guinea have secured spots in the quarter-finals with four places left up for grabs.
In three matches Hugo Broos’ men played, they won one, drew one and lost one. And they qualified for the next stage as number two.
Tau believes the last-16 clash against the Atlas Lions will be better than the group-stage matches as they would have gotten enough time to recover.
He feels the group stages were too much for players in a short period of time.
PERCY TAU PREVIEWING THE UPCOMING CLASH AGAINST MOROCCO
“We always try our best to recover as much as possible but then fatigue is a big fight we always have to go against,” he told FARPost.
“And yeah we’re trying our best. There’s so many games at the moment and then there is less days of recovery.
“But then now that we are in the last 16. We have a few days to rest, so it’s going to be better, it’s going to help us and we really believe the games [knockout stages] will be better.”
The Al Ahly man, Tau says they will do their utmost to repeat what they did last year when they beat Morocco in the AFCON qualifiers. However, he admitted it will be a different match from the last meeting.
IT WILL BE ‘TOTALLY DIFFERENT’
“The game that we played in South Africa is totally different to the one we’re going to have right here,” he added.
“I mean it’s the quarter-final [last-16], so they will try and do everything to win the game. And then yeah, it’s a game that we are looking forward to.
“And we’ll try our best to win it but we know it’s gonna be different from the one we played in Soccer City [FNB Stadium].”
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