MOSIMANE TO LEAD SOUTH AFRICA
Pitso Mosimane on Thursday signed a four year contract to be South
Africa’s new coach, tasked with qualifying the 2010 hosts for the next
World Cup in Brazil in four years’ time.
Mosimane had already been named as the only candidate for the job
earlier this month by the South African Football Association but his
contract still had to be negotiated.
With this concluded in midweek, his appointment was announced on
Thursday at a Johannesburg news conference.
The 45-year-old replaces the Brazilian Carlos Alberto Parreira, under
whom he had worked over the last four years. His appointment keeps a
promise the football association made to appoint a local to the job
once the 2010 World Cup was out of the way.
“I feel extremely privileged to be filing Carlos Alberto Parreira’s
shoes. I thank both the football association and Parreira for having
confidence in me and I know I’m the right person for the job,” he told
reporters.
Mosimane’s first task will be to try and qualify South Africa for
the 2012 African Nations Cup finals. The qualifying campaign begins in
September with a home game against Niger but a much more difficult
assignment against African champions Egypt, who are in the same group,
awaits him early next year.
South Africa’s side have shown a major improvement in form over the
last six months, and on Wednesday jumped 17 places in the latest FIFA
rankings. But they did not manage to exceed expectations at the World
Cup and were eliminated after just three matches, becoming in the
process the first host nation to fail to get past the first round..
Mosimane had a previous spell as South Africa's caretaker coach,
winning three, drawing three and losing just one of the seven matches
for which he was in charge.
He begins his new stint with a friendly against World Cup
quarter-finalists Ghana at Soccer City in Johannesburg on August 11.
He is a former striker who won three caps for the country and played
for several leading South African clubs before leaving for Greece,
where he played at Ionikos for six years, and brief stints in Belgium
and Qatar before retiring.
South Africa has had 15 different coaches in the last 18 years
since returning from a long-standing FIFA ban.
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