[ad_1]
Angola national team centre back, Jonathan Buatu Mananga, expects the Egypt national team to be among the five teams to qualify to the World Cup from Africa.
Egypt drew 2-2 with Angola to reach the final round of the FIFA World Cup qualifications, becoming the fourth team to do so alongside Mali, Morocco, and Senegal.
The game was interrupted on three occasions after three fans went on the pitch and one of them was seen hugging and wanting to take a picture with Mohamed Salah and Mananga says it’s normal for them to do so.
“When you see Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, you go to try to take a picture with them. It’s the same thing with Mohamed Salah, he doesn’t come to Angola every day and therefore they were keen on taking a picture with him,” the Sint-Truiden defender told ONTime Sport TV.
“We should be happy to have played this way against Egypt, one of the best teams in Africa. It’s natural to be happy to compete with Egypt, and we were even better in the first half as well. In general, we played a good match and we regret that we couldn’t keep our two-goal.
“We didn’t have anything to lose during the match, so we had to look our best. Our goal is to build a team for the future.
“The Egyptian team didn’t expect us to be this good, and this enabled us to take the initiative in the first-half,” he added.
Angola captain Mateus Galiano da Costa was subbed-off in the ninth minute to celebrate his final game and that’s what Malanga had to say about it.
“We didn’t think about what the Egyptian team would think about the difficulty of the match. It was the coach’s decision and we implement whatever he wants,” he continued.
The 28-year-old then discussed Egypt’s performance in both encounters.
“We faced Egypt twice, and their performance was not different. They allowed us to pass the ball in the midfield and didn’t put any pressure on us, and therefore the ball was easy to move. We did so in the second match as we did in the first encounter,” he explained.
“The Egyptian national team has many great players who are able to make a difference and change the result quickly thanks to their great experience.
“Certainly we know that Mohamed Salah is one of the best players in the world at the moment. We knew that we should not leave him any spaces, which is what happened,” he continued.
Malanga then concluded his statement by predicting which African teams will qualify to the World Cup.
“I expect Algeria, Senegal, Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria to reach the World Cup,” he concluded.
[ad_2]
Source link
