Parreira: We need to believe

With just eight weeks until the start of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, the pressure is mounting on Carlos Alberto Parreira, the man who has been tasked with moulding one of the host nation's most prized assets: the country’s national football team. It will be Bafana Bafana's biggest moment in their history, and they couldn't have a more experienced coach at their helm.

Parreira’s worries spread further than just preparing the team for the field of play. He has to manage expectations within South Africa on the team’s performance during the the finals. Top of his priority list is to get the team beyond their opening group and into the knockout rounds, and though he looks calm when talking to FIFA.com he compares that task to "climbing Mount Everest." South Africa will open their FIFA World Cup campaign against Mexico in front of a packed Soccer City in Johannesburg on 11 June. They will then face the rest of Group A: Uruguay and France.

When he joined South Africa on his second stint as a coach following the "amicable" departure of his countryman, Joel Santana, Parreira has had to contend with a lot of things, one of them being a team in need of purpose, confidence and composure. He inherited a side that had lost eight games on a trot and had been troubled by both injuries and self-doubt. Injuries you can heal, but self-doubt, as one proverb suggests, "might be chronic."