6 March 2023 –  South African Under-16 coach Zipho Dlangalala is happy with his team’s progress as he continues to run the rule over the side at the SAFA National Technical Centre in the south of Johannesburg.

The South African team has been invited to participate in a tournament in Poland running from 27 March to 1 April 2023 and the players arrived in camp on Sunday (5 March 2023). The tournament will consist of hosts Poland, Luxembourg and Northern Ireland.

“The camp started very well, with the players reporting for duty yesterday on Sunday. This morning on Monday (6 March 2023) we had all the players in camp except for one player who will be joining us late this afternoon,” Dlangalala said.

“So from the 20 players expected in camp, 19 are here with us. We finished a training session in the morning and nobody has any problems. Nobody came to camp with problems. We are looking forward to continuing with this exercise and put this young team together, the Under-16 national team.”

The first game for South Africa will be against Northern Ireland on 27 March and two days later, the African side will play Poland before wrapping up their itinerary with a game against Luxembourg on 1 April.

The team leaves for Poland on 25 March and is expected back in South Africa on 3 April. Dlangalala will be assisted by Mandla Mathaba while Thomas Nare will be the goalkeeper coach.

“We hope to help them through this week while we also do a lot of administration work, which is being done by our officials (at SAFA),” Dlangalala continued. “We look forward to having a good good camp with them, which has already started and there are some very good signs from the young men that are here. So it looks okay and we are hoping that we find the best way to prepare them for this week. While they’re also losing time at school, the camp is also prepared and will make space for them to do their work while they’re here as it would have happened if they were at home.

“So we have some time set aside for studying, which will be supervised.”

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