8 June 2019 – Bafana Bafana played and completed a highly successful practice match at TUKS Stadium on Saturday, 8 June 2019 in which strikers Lebo Mothiba, Lars Veldwijk and Percy Tau showed their appetite for goals.
Although the match was among the Bafana Bafana players, Saturday’s practice game in Pretoria left coach Stuart Baxter beaming with happiness.
While Tau was withdrawn after the first 45 minutes, Lars and Mothiba showed their hunger for goals and both were lethal upfront throughout the 90 minutes in Pretoria’s notorious heat.
Coach Baxter will trim his 26-man squad tomorrow afternoon at the team hotel in which three players will be dropped. Baxter has called a press conference in Fourways on Sunday, 9 June where he will name his final 23-man squad, required by CAF ahead of the AFCON tournament this month.
With all players showing hunger and enthusiasm to be part of the AFCON team, Baxter said it will be a difficult decision to make in dropping the mandatory three.
“Unfortunately, it is something we have to do to conform with the AFCON requirements,” he said.
The Senior Men’s National team flies off to Dubai on Monday to intensify their training programme.
While in the Middle East, they will play an international friendly against Ghana before heading for Egypt where they have pencilled another friendly match against either Angola or one of the qualifiers.
South Africa kick off their AFCON programme with a match against West African giants Ivory Coast in Cairo on 24 June and four days later, meet Namibia before rounding up their group matches with a big clash against Morocco on 1 July 2019.