Football
KweséESPN Staff 6y

Baxter wary of Libya threat in AFCON qualifier

South Africa coach Stuart Baxter is refusing to entertain any plans of securing Africa Cup of Nations qualification early, and then use the remaining matches to experiment ahead of next year's finals in Cameroon.

Instead, he says South Africa must just focus on qualifying for the 2019 finals in Cameroon.

With the top two teams in the four-nation group to qualify for the expanded 24-team finals, and South Africa having already picked up three points away in Nigeria, the path looks clear for Bafana Bafana to book their place early.

"In terms of qualification I will be happy with the qualification. When that comes it will be a welcomed guest," he told the media as he laid out his plans for the September 8 Group E game against Libya in Durban.

"We would love to wrap this up quickly because that would give us a great opportunity to then try and rotate some players and give some international experience to some of the younger players, but if that has to wait, it has to wait."

Baxter has been scarred by the experience of last year's World Cup qualifiers, where the team also made a positive start but then flopped home and away against the tiny Cape Verde Islands in embarrassing reversals against one of Africa's smallest countries.

"I think we have to have a humble mentality. We have not been spoilt by qualifications and our priority must be the Libya game," Baxter continued.

"When you look at global football, the names of the countries are becoming less and less important.

"Iceland were only four or five years ago a total no-hoper and on this African continent we get constant surprises from teams that only five or six years ago would have been whipping boys.

"Global football is changing and this Libyan team are more like a club team because of the war-torn country they are from.

"They are almost constantly in camp together, affording their coach a lot of time to prepare the team and I have seen this team give Morocco a real scare.

"I see this team (Libya) as a well organised team - maybe not with the household names that Senegal, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast have, but this is a workman-like team that will present a real challenge for us.

"And, I would guess, in all humility, it has not been a strength of South Africa when they take on some of these countries that, on paper, are not the greatest on the planet.

"So, we need to know that, to start with, names mean nothing anymore but performances mean something and we have got to try to make sure that we give the sort of performance that is going to give us the three points. This is certainly a Libyan team that is capable."

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