27 March 2023 – The South African U16 Men’s National Team will kick off their participation in a youth tournament in Poland when they face Northern Ireland on Monday afternoon (27 March 2023).

Coach Zipho Dlangalala’s charges were specially invited through the UEFA Assist programme and he is happy to finally get the ball rolling and test his players against the other participants in the tournament.

“We arrived in Poland in good health on Saturday (25 March 2023) after a long journey and got straight to business, as we held a training session for the boys. Sunday (26 March 2023) was our MD-1 session and we had to focus on our playing style and tactical approach for the match against Northern Ireland,”  Dlangalala told www.www.safa.net.

“We are here to firstly learn from these opponents and get the players to understand that international football is different to local football. We will be facing opponents that are much bigger in physical structure than us, but we will stay true to our strengths.

“We believe that this tournament will be a great learning experience for us, and we are very grateful for this opportunity to build our football development.”

The tournament runs from 27 March to 1 April 2023 and the participants are the hosts Poland, Luxembourg and Northern Ireland.

South Africa will play Northern Ireland on Monday (27 March 2023) at 4pm South African time at Miejski Osir Stadium. They will then play against hosts Poland on Wednesday (29 March 2023) at Miejski Floriana Stadium at 12pm SA time, before wrapping up the U16 UEFA Development Tournament against Luxembourg on Saturday 1 April 2023.

See team profiles below:  

https://www.safa.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/u16-Player-profiles.pdf