Egypt coach Bob Bradley insists that the national team are still moving in the right direction despite the failure to reach the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations.

The seven-time African champions were shocked by Central African Republic in the qualifying preliminaries, losing 4-3 on aggregate.

Coach Bradley said he understood the disappointment of the setback but remained defiant over his team’s successful start in the World Cup qualifiers.

Good direction

“I believe that I will continue at this moment. Certainly we know that when there is a disappointing result for any national team coach, there are decisions that you can’t control,” Bradley told Modern Kora’s Ahmed Shobeir.

“But I’m very proud of the work we’ve done during this period. The month of June was important.

Egypt were well-beaten at home

“There were two halves. There was the first which was to get off with a good start in World Cup qualifying. In the first half we were successful.

“In the second half we needed to advance in the CAN qualifiers and where we were not successful, but we still feel that we’re moving the team forward in a good direction.”

Critical moments

Commenting on the tie against CAR, Bradley believes that a couple of crucial mistakes from the first leg condemned his side to the unexpected defeat.

“There were a couple of critical moments in the first game. We took the lead 1-0 and we had a very good chance to make it 2-0 that we didn’t take advantage of,” the American added.

“We made a very bad mistake to let CAR back in the match.

“Again we took the lead and we had a very good chance when it was 2-1, but we didn’t take advantage and we made some critical mistakes and ultimately we paid for this.”