Pitso Mosimane continued his perfect record against Hossam Hassan as South Africa secured a 1-0 friendly victory over Egypt at Cairo Stadium on Sunday.
The match was part of both sides’ preparations for their upcoming commitments, with South Africa producing a disciplined performance to defeat the hosts despite Egypt controlling much of the game.
Egypt enjoyed the greater share of possession and spent long periods applying pressure, while South Africa sat deep, defended in an organised manner and looked to break quickly. That approach paid off in the 51st minute when Puso Dithejane scored the only goal of the match.
The move began with a long ball played behind the Egypt defence. Mustafa Shobeir came out of his goal but failed to deal with the situation, allowing Dithejane to run through and place the ball into an unguarded net.
Egypt increased their attacking efforts for the remainder of the second half in search of an equaliser. Substitute Hamza Abdelkarim proved one of the hosts’ liveliest players after coming on and caused South Africa’s defence several problems.
The closest Egypt came to scoring arrived in the 71st minute. Abdelkarim rose to meet a cross and sent a powerful header towards goal, but goalkeeper Ricardo produced an excellent save to preserve South Africa’s advantage.
Egypt threatened again in the closing seconds when the crossbar denied Ibrahim Adel. The forward’s shot came from inside the penalty area after South Africa were briefly unsettled following a corner.
The hosts were unable to turn their territorial dominance and attacking pressure into a goal, leaving South Africa to claim a narrow victory built on defensive organisation and the ability to punish an error.
The result also strengthened Mosimane’s record against Hassan. The two coaches had previously met three times, when Mosimane was manager of Al Ahly and Hassan was in charge of Al Ittihad Alexandria. Mosimane won all three of those earlier encounters, meaning this was his fourth victory over Hassan.
Egypt had collected four points from their opening two competitive matches in the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers. They drew 0-0 with Angola before recording a 5-0 win against South Sudan.
The teams’ most recent competitive meeting came in the group stage of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations, when Egypt won 1-0.
