Baxter gets ready for Nigeria duel
Bafana coach to miss SuperSport’s trip to Gabon
Stuart Baxter has turned his attention to the Bafana Bafana job as juggling the national coaching job with SuperSport United’s is underway.
He will not travel with United to Gabon for their CAF Confederation Cup game against CF Mounana tomorrow as he will be preparing for his first game back in charge of Bafana.
He will, however, be on the United bench for the last game of the season and again in next month’s Nedbank Cup final.
The Briton will on Thursday announce the Bafana squad to play against Nigeria in their Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifier on June 10.
“I’ve done some work on the [Bafana] squad. I’ve done some work on the opponents. I’m reading a lot of Nigerian newspapers everyday, I’m trying to find out what they are thinking,” said Baxter.
This was after United’s 4-2 win on penalties over Chippa United at Sisa Dukashe Stadium in Mdantsane to advance to the Nedbank Cup final.
Baxter said he had already asked Safa to write to teams, both locally and overseas, to release players earlier if they had finished their league seasons.
‘‘ I’ve done work on Nigeria. I’m reading a lot of Nigerian papers daily
He admitted that because of his SuperSport United duties, he did not have time to watch Nigeria play.
“I’ve had to say, ‘right, the next two days I’ll take my SuperSport hat off and put on my Bafana hat on’. The preparations aren’t going to be perfect but I’ll get a DVD [of Nigeria matches]. I’ll break that down [and] look at their last three games.”
Baxter indicated that he might not fiddle too much with the team that was recently selected by caretaker coach Owen da Gama.
“I don’t mean you certainly start bringing back Morgan Gould although he was fantastic [on Saturday] but you know what I mean. The ones, players like Dean [Furman] with the experience that he’s got. Itu [Khune] will be important in these sort of games,” Baxter said.
Reacting to SuperSport’s win over Chippa, Baxter said: “I’ll be coming back for the final. Someone said [retaining the Nedbank Cup] ‘would be a great way to send you off ’.”