Football: 2016 Cosafa Castle Cup |11 June 2016

Seychelles in action tonight against Madagascar

Seychelles will make its bow at the 2016 Council of Southern Africa Football Associations Castle Cup tonight when they take on Madagascar in a group A clash.

Our country’s national team will play their opening game at 8.30pm local time with a tough test against a strong Madagascar side who were eliminated by eventual champions Namibia in the semifinals at the last championship.

Coach Ralph Jean-Louis and his assistants, Bruno Saindini and Don Anacoura, will surely be positive of their chances after they made Seychelles believe in their team once again when the team performed above expectations against Algeria recently in the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifiers.

One of Seychelles’ major problems in recent years though is not being able to maintain the same level of consistency in their performances and this may be because of the constant changes in coaches, this failing to provide continuity to the squads.

With coach Jean-Louis, however, Seychelles have someone who knows our strengths and weaknesses and hopefully he will be able to use his experience to bring back some consistency in the team’s games and help push the country up in the Fifa world ranking.

Meanwhile, fans will be in for a treat at the opening ceremony of the 2016 Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Castle Cup at the Sam Nujoma Stadium in Windhoek tonight that will officially signal the start of the two-week long festival of football.

The Namibians will also be parading inside the stadium with the trophy they won last year, a trophy that they will be hoping they can retain this time around on home soil.

The ceremony will precede the opening game between four-time winners Zimbabwe and an ever-improving Swaziland side.

That match will kick-off at 6pm and will be followed by the second group A encounter between Seychelles and Zimbabwe.

The Cosafa Castle Cup enjoys a wide profile, well beyond the borders of its member countries, and is an excellent chance for Namibia to showcase the beauty of the country and friendliness of its people.

Live television coverage, unprecedented for a competition of this nature, takes the event into the homes of people right throughout Africa and also into Europe and South America.

The tournament is one of a kind on the international calendar, given that no other regional event can boast a similar longevity or as wide a reach as the Cosafa Castle Cup. Zambia and Zimbabwe have each won the title on four occasions since the competition was first played in 1997, with Angola and South Africa managing two wins each.

S. N.