Car­los Al­ber­to Par­reira con­tin­ues to work his mag­ic for South Africa and it near­ly brought a ma­jor up­set yes­ter­day in the open­ing match of the World Cup. The Brazil­ian is back in his sec­ond spell in charge and saw his team ex­tend its un­beat­en streak to 13 games af­ter the 1-1 draw with Mex­i­co at Soc­cer City, where Bafana Bafana was inch­es away from a clas­sic vic­to­ry as Katlego Mphela's late ef­fort hit the post.

Rafael Mar­quez pro­vid­ed the heart-break­ing equalis­er af­ter An­dres Guarda­do float­ed in a left-foot­ed cross from the left. The un­marked Mar­quez con­trolled the ball and side-foot­ed it in­to the net in the 79th minute. Siphi­we Tsha­bal­ala had giv­en the host na­tion a dream start, fin­ish­ing off a well-worked move in the 55th to set off wild cel­e­bra­tions at Soc­cer City among the more than 90,000 horn-blow­ing fans.

Par­reira has turned the team in­to a hap­py unit, com­fort­able with its un­der­dog sta­tus and the pres­sure of play­ing in front of a pas­sion­ate home crowd. "He (Par­reira) need­ed to give the team an iden­ti­ty and that's what he did," said mid­field­er Reneil­we Let­sholonyane. "He un­der­stands us and we un­der­stand him very well. He is al­ways mo­ti­vat­ing us. He likes to see us hap­py." Par­reira, who in­her­it­ed a de­mor­al­ized group of play­ers af­ter a poor spell un­der for­mer coach Joel San­tana, said the game was a piv­otal mo­ment for his in­ex­pe­ri­enced team.

"I be­lieve the ice has been bro­ken ...and I be­lieve in the next match we will be even more con­fi­dent," Par­reira said. The home play­ers faced up to their biggest foot­balling mo­ment by singing in uni­son as they emerged from the tun­nel to face 84,000 ex­pec­tant fans and a Mex­i­can team ranked 64 places high­er by FI­FA. "The song means this is our time," Kag­isho Dik­ga­coi ex­plained. "It's the time we have been wait­ing for. We have said be­fore that our time will come and we think that this is our time."