Bafana Bafana coach Pitso Mosimane has explained the inclusion of Mamelodi Sundowns attacker Siyanda ‘Skwishi’ Ndlovu despite the player not being in the preliminary squad to face Kenya in back-to-back 2027 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifiers.
The first match is scheduled for Orlando Amstel Arena on 13 November, with the return leg in the East African country on 17 November.
Mosimane’s charges currently lead qualifying Group D with six points from two matches, while Harambee Stars who have already qualified by virtue of being one of the co-hosts of the tournament, are in third of the group with one point from two games was well.
Meanwhile the 23-year-old Ndlovu has impressed since arriving at Sundowns at the beginning of the season, where he has featured 15 times across all competitions with three goals and two assists to his name.
He wasn’t named in the preliminary squad with coach Mosimane explaining that his technical team cannot be held to ransom by that fact when naming Ndlovu in the final team.
“The most important thing is to know that we should not be the slaves or be held by a preliminary squad, right,” said Mosimane on SABC TV.
“Remember the preliminary squad [Tshepang] Moremi was not in the preliminary squad, but he played against Egypt. So preliminary squad is a squad we name because of many, many, many reasons.
“First, we acknowledge we’re saying ‘we are watching you’. We acknowledge what your contribution is, especially like we see Man of the Matches. I think three times in a row, four times in a row [for Ndlovu].
“I mean, you cannot ignore that, right? And we need to encourage. And we don’t call him to say to say, ‘Ah, you’re going to play’. No, we’re not saying that.
“We are saying you are part of the team. We’re building a team. We’re building a pool of players that we have a vision. We have a vision 2030, right?”
“I hope we get with the World Cup, right? That’s the vision we have. But we need to behave the vision. We need to have AFCON finals, right? Yes, we are in the qualifiers. You got to win. You can’t talk about AFCON finals and the World Cup.
“You know the route to get there, right? But you don’t want to arrive there then you say, oh, for example, Thapelo Maseko is injured, so what are we going to do? So we’re building that, and let’s give credit they build teams, they build systems, just in case one is injured. Just in case you want to see that or this.
“So we need to build a pool of players that sometimes you call them just to be part of us, to know what we do, to that get that experience.
“So that when you come, you’re not saying, ‘Oh, what’s happening here, what’s new?’ You might not be part of Kenya home and away, but you have to know what we do.”
‘I need more analysts’
Mosimane continued his line of argument, saying he also needs more analysts to help with his work, as they only have limited time when players are in camp – and for example they still need recap the Egypt match with their players.
“We have match analysis. We have corrections. We watch our training sessions. We put our training sessions in the mornings of almost every day at the camp to see what came out. I mean, amongst ourselves, and if there’s anything we need to communicate to the team, we have to show them to say, look, it came out in training, and it did not come out. Why?
“So we need to talk to the player also and talk to ourselves. It’s a lot of lot of work, and that’s why I would say maybe I need to double my analysts because you go to check your training sessions, and we go to also prepare a session that will help and enhance that.
“We’ve got to check what happened against Egypt. I don’t want to talk about Eritrea because we corrected some of the things after Eritrea, but we haven’t corrected after Egypt. When did we correct? So we have to go back to those things.
“You can see that Musi [Matlaba] needs more assistance. And I was so happy that Bafana had about four analysts in the World Cup that were working with Coach Hugo Broos, right? They are there. They contribute. So hopefully I’ll get the same, right?”