The head coach of an African giant has questioned his opponents' intentions to host their Africa Cup of Nations qualifier in South Africa, having played their initial home games in Morocco.
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Madagascar does not have any CAF-approved stadia in their nation. As a consequence, all of their home matches have been played outside the country.
Their latest qualifier against Tunisia was held at Loftus Versfeld on Thursday evening, where a dramatic 3-2 win for the away side ensued.
Their first two home matches were, however, played in North Africa. They first faced Comoros in the Tunisian city of Rades, then played Gambia in Casablanca. With qualification still within reach ahead of their penultimate qualifier against the Carthage Eagles, they decided to play their final home encounter in South Africa.
While they came close to victory, it was the 2004 African champions who emerged victorious following a 93rd-minute winner by Ali Al-Abdi.
After the match, the head coach of the North African giants, Kais Yaakoubi, suggested that Madagascar may have decided to play the match in Pretoria to intentionally tire his charges ahead of the game.
"It seems a bit strange, because I think Madagascar played the other match in Morocco," the 58-year-old started off by saying.
"As you know, from Tunisia to Pretoria is more than 15 hours so basically all the players were tired and didn't have much time to work on the tactical aspect of the game. It was more to prepare the players physically to play the game and that was our goal.
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"We didn't have a lot of time to practise and this was maybe the plan for Madagascar, to make our players tired in order to have a better chance of winning the game but at the end Tunisia won the game."
By Kamogelo Motecwane
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