South Africa midfielder Teboho Mokoena is optimistic that they can get beyond the quarterfinals of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations.

Bafana Bafana progressed into the last eight, thanks to a shock 2-0 win over Morocco.

Evidence Makgopa and Mokoena both scored for South Africa, who will now face Cape Verde next.

Bafana won the trophy in 1996 and finished runners-up two years later.

Since then, they have clinched bronze once, reached the quarterfinals four times, and failed to qualify from the group stages on four occasions.

The last time they played in the tournament, in 2019, South Africa were eliminated in the last eight hurdle.

But Mokoena told reporters: “Honestly, the expectation from us is to take it one game at a time, because this tournament, we all can see, nobody can say who’s going to win it.

“So the top five teams in Africa are all out. So it’s up to us or the other teams to take the trophy and in 2019, we reached the quarter-finals. So it’s not a surprise to South Africans, the quarterfinals are not new to us.

“So we must take it a step higher because we need to take the national team to a better place than we found it, so yeah, that’s our aim and goal as a team, so yeah, we will see.”

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