Fasten Your Seatbelts: Travel Schedule & Matches for Preliminary Qualifiers Set

The month of June is gonna be quite a roller coaster for our national team. Check out this schedule Infofoot provided earlier today:

-Assembling of selected players on 25th of May, 2008.

-Tunisia vs. Burkina Faso on the 1st of June, 2008 at Rades Stadium (18:00).

-Flight for Seychelles on the 3rd of June, 2008.

-Seychelles vs. Tunisia on the 7th of June, 2008 (16:00 local time)

-Departure for Nairobi Kenya on the 12th. Nairobi to Bujumbura (Burundi) on the 13th of June, 2008.

-Burundi vs. Tunisia on the 15th of June (15:00 local time).

-Return to Tunis via Brussels. Training camp in Hammamet begins on the 16th of June, 2008.

-Tunisia vs. Burundi on the 21st of June at Rades Stadium (19:00)

So that’s all well and good but let’s continue to pray Santini isn’t the guy picking up the pieces after Lemerre bounces for his next destination. I don’t see us having many troubles with group, no matter who the coach is.

The FTF blindly have their hearts set on this terrible decision. Aye, aye rassi! What I’m worried about is the next phase of qualifiers where the competition is certain to be much stiffer. Having a capable coach and technical staff by that point will be crucial. Unfortunately we’re not as good at planning coaching changes and setting well defined and achievable goals as we are at booking flights and accommodations!

In Other News

Not only will Club Africain be without Gharzoul and Mouihbi on Friday when they try to overturn the 5-1 deficit from that Eniyimba game (that will forever live in infamy), but now CAF just slapped a match ban on Moussa Pokong. Talk about pouring salt in the wound! Moussa reacted very angrily after the match and practically chased the ref off the field because he overheard him conspiring with one of the Nigerians in Pidgin English during the game. This is the interaction as he described it on Hannibal TV:

The referee had just awarded a free kick to Club Africain (a rare occasion). In his dialect one of the Nigerian players looked to the ref and said: “Hey man, what do you think you’re doing?” The referee replies: “Well you guys need to do something, then we can help you out.” Moussa kind of lost it at that point and kept asking questions of the referee who thought no one on Club Africain would understand this dialect. The ref just smiled at him as if to say, “thats how it is.”

Moussa should have known better than to threaten the ref after the match but honestly we’re lucky he didn’t actually reach him in time to inflict bodily harm. So thank you CAF, we’ll still give it our best shot in Tunis but if we can’t overturn this result I guess we’ll just have to lift the Confederation Cup instead!