Football: 2010 World Cup and CAN qualifiers-Sparrows here, ready for Pirates |06 September 2008

According to reports, the Sparrows were expected here on Thursday on board Kenya Airways but changed their route, arriving yesterday on Emirates.

Hosted at the Berjaya Beau Vallon Bay Beach Resort and Casino, the Sparrows trained yesterday afternoon.
Today’s game at Stad Linite starts at 4.30pm and the Pirates, whose ranking jumped four places from 161st to 157th in the latest Fifa/Coca-Cola rankings released on September 3, do not stand a chance of progressing from the group.

Still, the Pirates should look to secure their first point of the campaign after four successive defeats. They are without a point after losing to Burundi (0-1 away), Burkina Faso (2-3 at home and 1-4 away) and Tunisia (0-2 at home).
Burundi are ranked 126th worldwide, Burkina Faso 64th and Tunisia 44th.

Speaking ahead of the Pirates’ last home encounter in the qualifiers, football director Ulric Mathiot said: “It’s back to business. We expect to field a full squad as most of the key players have recovered from injuries picked up recently. In fact, we are to field almost the same team who played in the Cosafa Senior Challenge Cup in South Africa. We know the Burundi team and we’ve worked on different playing strategies which we hope to implement depending on how they play.”

It remains to be seen if the Pirates, whose final group match is against Tunisia away during the weekend of October 10-12, can pick up their first point in the qualifiers.

The group’s other match is between Burkina Faso and Tunisia in Ouagadougou. It pits two Portuguese coaches – Paulo Duarte and Humberto Coelho – against each other. It is the first competitive game for Coelho, who has replaced Roger Lemerre as coach of Tunisia.

Coelho will be without two injured key players – youthful striker Amine Chermiti and Brazil-born Francileudo dos Santos.
The Stallions of Burkina Faso, one of only two teams with a 100% record in the qualifiers, are guaranteed a place in the final phase of the African preliminaries if they can produce another upset win over Tunisia this weekend.

Burkina Faso are not the only team on the brink of going through to the next phase, however, with Côte d’Ivoire and Morocco both looking set to advance.

As for Nigeria, they have already made sure of their progress to next year’s third round of the continental preliminaries.

G. G.