Chiefs player in Bafana squad to face Eswatini, Ivory Coast

Just one Chiefs player has earned inclusion in the Bafana squad for the international friendly matches against Eswatini and Ivory Coast.

Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos. Image Source (@SAFA/Twitter)

The preliminary squad has now been trimmed to 23 players, with Broos announcing his final list for the two matches, which includes just the solitary Chiefs player – namely Sibongiseni Mthethwa.

The team will report for camp in Johannesburg on 8 October 2023 and after hosting Eswatini on 13 October, Hugo Broos and his Bafana Bafana charges will travel to Abidjan on a direct flight from Johannesburg on the following day. They return to South Africa on 18 October.

These matches are part of the coach’s preparations for the Africa Cup of Nations in January next year, and for the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers in November.

KAIZER CHIEFS PLAYERS IN THE BAFANA BAFANA SQUAD

The representation of Chiefs players under Broos was already a talking point earlier this year when the coach sought to explain his recent comments suggesting no Chiefs players deserved a national call-up.

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Broos’ comments were met with a backlash from Chiefs coach Molefi Ntseki, but the Bafana boss has since suggested some of what he said was taken out of context.

“About the players of Kaizer Chiefs – I said, first, that they don’t deserve to be with the national team. And when I said they don’t deserve it, I didn’t mean that they didn’t have the skills, but the performances are not enough to be [with] Bafana Bafana.

“At that moment [when I made the announcement], Kaizer Chiefs had four points [from a possible] 12 in the [league] competition, and you saw what the reaction was of the supporters after their defeat to Galaxy. I don’t think that I said something wrong.

“Secondly, I’ve said that there are many new players [at Chiefs] and that it takes some time [for integration] and that is okay. It’s not easy to implement 5-6 new players in your team. As I said, nothing changed [at Chiefs] compared to last season. Kaizer Chiefs struggled all the season last year. I don’t know which plays in the ranking they ended, but the performances were not what we can expect from Kaizer Chiefs.”

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