Botswana to play South Africa in regional soccer tourney

Botswana's national soccer team the Zebras is set to play neighbors South Africa in the regional Confederation of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA) tournament slated for May 2015 in South Africa.

The draw for the tournament was done on Thursday night and pitted Botswana against Bafana Bafana in the quarterfinals.

At least 12 of the 14 COSAFA countries have confirmed participation in this year's tournament.

Angola and Comoros have pulled out of the competition and their places will be taken by 2015 AFCON finalists Ghana and Tanzania as guest teams.

The eight lowest ranked teams, according to the FIFA rankings, will compete in the first round and were drawn into two pools each containing four teams. The top two teams in each group will advance to the knockout stage, where they will join the six higher ranked sides at the quarterfinals.

Botswana, currently ranked 6th in the region, will therefore proceed straight to the quarterfinals where they will play South Africa. The tournament will give Peter Butler's side a perfect opportunity for competitive matches after a long period of inactivity following the team's failure to qualify for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) that ended in Equatorial Guinea earlier this month.

Against Bafana Bafana, Botswana faces a rejuvenated team that, despite failure to progress to the knockout stages of AFCON, did a stellar job in the qualifiers where they qualified at the expense of African powerhouse and then defending champions Nigeria.

Zebras made some progress after Butler assembled a relatively new team after replacing Stanley Tshosane as coach at the beginning of 2014. The team managed to get through to the group stages of the AFCON qualifiers. Endi