Bafana face tough contest

BAFANA Bafana will come up against a Zambian side that views this afternoon’s African Nations Championship qualifier as a do-or-die match, further compounding problems for a squad that was hastily put together.

Unlike Bafana, who will field fringe players, Chipolopolo will put up a formidable team of locally-based players at Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in the second leg of the final round of the Chan qualifiers that kicks off at 3pm.

Bafana need to overturn the 2-2 result they were held to in the first leg in East London.

The winner of this match will book a ticket to the tournament that will be played in Kenya from January 11 to February 2.

Chipolopolo, who won the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations and then failed to make it to the last contest after bowing out in the group stage in 2013 and 2015, want to use Chan as a breeding ground for the talent that will take over from the stars who were the toast of the continent five years ago.

Bafana arrived in Ndola on Thursday with a team that was hit by several withdrawals from the initial 25-man squad that coach Stuart Baxter named for the first leg against Chipolopolo.

Despite those withdrawals and having little time to work with this group, they put on an admirable performance in the first leg to go 2-0 up. But they struggled to hold on to their lead, giving Zambia the opportunity to score two crucial away goals.

Baxter didn’t travel with the team as he is preparing for the 2019 Afcon qualifier against Cape Verde next month. Assistant coach Thabo Senong is in charge of the team.

“Before we started our Chan qualifiers, we knew that we are going to have challenges on the release of players from their clubs because these qualifiers are played on non-Fifa dates,” Senong said.

“We decided as a federation and as a technical team to use this Chan exercise as an opportunity to fast-track the development of some of our Under-20 players who were a part of the Under-20 Afcon in Zambia, Under-20 World Cup in Korea and the Under-23s who went to the Olympics in Brazil.

By taking this exercise, we knew that this would help us increase the pool of Bafana players. We’ve given exposure to 16 former Under-20 players. They will benefit in the long run. For us to qualify for Kenya, it will be a beautiful story. We haven’t given up.”