Angola coach Luis Oliveira Goncalves admits the World Cup debutants will be defending the honour of an entire continent when they face Mexico on Friday in their second Group D match.

The Angolans were beaten 1-0 by former colonial masters Portugal in their opener and that has been part of a losing trend for the continent at a World Cup where traditional heavyweights Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal failed to qualify as did 2010 World Cup hosts South Africa.

All four black African nations at the World Cup - Angola, Togo, the Ivory Coast and Ghana - are all making their first appearances at the tournament and all got off to losing starts.

The fifth African nation - Tunisia - have previous World Cup experience and drew 2-2 in their opener with Saudi Arabia.

"We are worried and we must be realistic but we are improving all the time," said Goncalves.

"We have our difficulties and there is a gulf between us and the Latin American and European teams but it's down to our footballing authorities in Africa to work together to try to improve the situation.

"We must be happy and Africa is a continent that has other priorities which are more important than football - we have to think about health, education, development and debt. We are aware of our responsibilities.

"We are representing our country but not only Angola - we are representing a whole continent."

The Black Antelopes are likely to be unchanged for the match with the Mexicans, whom Goncalves considers to be an outside bet to win the World Cup.

That means Fabrice Akwa is likely to start up front as a lone striker - a tactic that has proved popular at the 2006 World Cup with France, Portugal and Holland just some of the other teams to adopt it.

"Their (the Mexican) players have been preparing for this tournament for two months which shows how seriously they are taking it," said Goncalves, who was given the national team job largely on the basis of his work with the under-21 side which he took to the World Cup for that age group in Argentina in 2001.

"They are without doubt here to win the World Cup and they will be good opponents but we will do our best to get the result we want."