Egypt shell shocked after round of 16 exit

IN CAIRO

When the full of running Thembinkosi Lorch got on the end of a sweeping South Africa counter attack to neatly slot in the ball into the net for the winning goal five minutes from time in their round of 16 match against hosts Egypt at a jam-packed Cairo International Stadium, you would have heard a pin drop.

When the final whistle was blown by Gabonese referee Eric Castane you would have heard that pin roll.

The over 75,000 thousand fans at Egypt’s iconic sports facility were left eerily dumbstruck. They stood shell shocked long after the final whistle trying to comprehend what has just happened.

Under normal circumstances when a home team loses a game, the partisan fans walk out of the stadium in a huff, some even before the final whistle. In this case, it was an astonishing sight to see the nearly Pharaohs followers momentarily rooted onto their seats in stunned disbelieve.

This was not supposed to happen. They were the hosts, they had Mohammed Salah -- perhaps one of the best players in the world last season, they had won the tile here in Egypt three times, and tellingly, they had not lost to an African nation here since November 15, 2014 when Senegal shocked them 1-0 in a 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier.

If you were a neutral, it was painful to see the crestfallen faces in Cairo coming to terms with the fact that this was not going to be their year.

But as a purist of the game, or a South African fan, this was football, as compelling, draining, and unpredictable as Kenyan political realignments.

Fortune favours the brave, and South Africa Scottish coach Stuart Baxter, true to his promise, executed his strategy to perfection to pull what is surely the upset of the tournament so far.

Bafana Bafana did not defend deep as Egypt may have expected, but kept a high line and disrupted the home side’s passing game.

Amiens SC (France) player Bongani Zulu and the calm Dean Furman of SuperSport United controlled that midfield battle well. To understand how tactically disciplined Bafana Bafana were, the dangerous Salah was near absent in this match, rarely getting balls in space to run at defenders, and the few he got South African left back Thamsanqa Mkhize of Cape Town City was quickly on to him like a cat on a mouse.

Egypt’s best chance of the match came in the 56th minute when Salah found rare space to drive forward and release a defense-splitting pass to Abdallah El Said who fired straight at Bafana Bafana goalie Ronwen

South Africa looked threatening running forward and they were duly rewarded deep into the second half with a fluid counter from their third to book a quarters slot.

“We were not good offensively in our first three games. We needed to work on that. We played well against a good Egyptian team and I am very pleased with the result,” said Baxter.

Nothing of that sort looked conceivably earlier on as an expectant home nation waited for another Pharaohs victory.

Two and a half hours to kick off Cairo Stadium was already full and charged for action.

“C’est la vie” – “That’s life” a Franco-Arab hit song by Algerian artist Khaled, that celebrates life and love, reverberated in the stadium.

South African lived on, and Egypt in a demonstration of love, congratulated the victors, on the pitch and in the streets.