Things are beginning to take shape in the Bafana Bafana camp a few days before their highly anticipated opening match of the Africa Cup of Nations against Angola on Monday evening.
All 25 players are already in camp after being joined by three overseas-based players who travelled straight to north Africa after being released by their respective teams.
After a long trip to North Africa, Bafana Bafana players had their first training session in Marrakesh late on Friday.
Bafana’s Head of Delegation, David Molwantwa is oozing confidence, despite the chilly conditions in Marraakesh.
“The boys are in high spirit. When we arrived here, we found three other boys – Lyle, Shandre, and Sithole – and now it’s full squad and things are going well. No injuries thus far and the boys are raring to go. The boys are adjusting well. You will realise that most of the boys here are younger and you know boys with the coldness they can handle it.”
Molwantwa says Bafana Bafana do not want to repeat the mistake they made in the Ivory Coast last year, when they went down 2-nil to Mali in their opening match.
“When we start well, it says the next game against Egypt, which, according to us, would be a tough opponent. We will approach that with an advantage after having won the first match, and that will give us an impetus moving forward, and even to send fear against Egypt and Zimbabwe. So really, I see this team coming out with nine points. I see us winning all three matches. I’m not putting pressure on the team, but obviously that’s what we are here for – victory all the way. We must improve. We ended third and we must go all the way this time around.”
Bafana Bafana will also use the AFCON tournament as a dry run for the FIFA World Cup in the Americas next year. It’ll be their first appearance in the global football showpiece since South Africa hosted the tournament in 2010.
Molwantwa says, “Doing well here would augur well for us going into the World Cup because obviously Mexico and all these other countries we are to play with will be looking closely at how we are playing here. And playing well here would mean that we are going to the World Cup a better team than the one that got into the AFCON.”
The team will have another couple of training sessions and will hopefully be fully acclimatised by Monday when they take on Angola at 7 PM.
