The African champions conceded in the 93rd minute at Ellis Park to remain bottom of Group 7 with one point from three games.

Even so, Gharib remained defiant as he indicated that the recent political unrest had a slight impact on the Pharaohs’ performance.

''We can still quality, even though South Africa have seven points," the Egypt second man said at the post-match press conference.

"If we beat South Africa it was going to be better in the return match, but we can beat them at home and take it from there.

"I would like to congratulate the South African team. They played very well until the last minute and unfortunately for us we were passing a very difficult situation in Egypt as all of you know the situation over there.

"Actually, we haven’t trained in the past two months because of the situation [political unrest]. We were so unlucky at the end of it. We were not fortunate, but that’s football … we were not playing for a draw and our players tried very hard to win the game.''

Gharib explained that the late introduction of attack duo Mohamed Abou-Treika and Mohamed Zidan was down to fitness issues.

Future

When asked about the technical staff’s future, Gharib said: "That will be the decision of the Egyptian Football Association.

"The answer cannot come at a press conference -- we need to talk to the team management and decide our future."

Meanwhile, Egyptian FA chairman Samir Zaher said after the game that the board will hold an emergency meeting to discuss the future of manager Hassan Shehata and his staff.

Shehata’s contract with Egypt runs out after the 2014 World Cup finals.