Brave Warriors Afcon opponents withdraw

MAURITANIA has withdrawn from the Gabon-Equatorial Guinea 2012 Orange Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifiers, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has announced.
Mauritania was in Group F, which also includes Namibia, Gambia and Burkina Faso. Namibia was due to play Mauritania on October 9 in Windhoek.

According to www.cafonline.com, the General Secretary of the CAF, Mustapha Fahmy said, ‘We have just been informed by the Mauritania Football Federation of the withdrawal of its national team from the qualifiers of the Orange CAN 2010 qualifiers.’The coach of Namibia’s Brave Warriors, Tom Saintfiet, said he was surprised by the decision.’It’s surprising because they played a preparation match against Palestine in August and they did very well with a 0-0 draw,’ Saintfiet said.’It is not positive for the Brave Warriors because it will put more pressure on us as it means that we will only play four matches for our qualifiers and with a possibility of getting a maximum of only 12 points,’ Saintfiet added.’It’s also sad for us because there will be a period of six months before we play our next match against Burkina Faso after we play our first qualifiers against Gambia in September,’ he continued.Saintfiet said that he would not change anything about their approach to the qualifiers as a result of this change.’No, we are not going to change anything in our game plan,’ he said.CAF states that, ‘In case a group of four is reduced to three teams during the competition, the two best runners up of the groups of four will be determined by taking into account their best results with the first and third of their respective groups without taking into account their results against the last team of their groups in order to allow the second of the group reduced to three teams to remain in the race for the two best second.’Fourteen teams will confirm their places through the qualifiers, with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea qualifying automatically as they are co-hosting the tournament.The Brave Warriors went into camp on Sunday evening in preparation for their first qualifier against Gambia on September 4 in Banjul.Saintfiet announced a 29-man squad that will be in the camp, of which only 18 will be chosen to go to Gambia.- namibiasport.com.na

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