Ntseki sticks with his stars
NTSEKI: HEART-TO-HEART CHATS WITH KHUNE AND ZUNGU Tense struggle ahead for Bafana Bafana to claim an Afcon qualifying place.
Molefi Ntseki has explained that he had heart-to-heart conversations with both Bongani Zungu and Itumeleng Khune before selecting the pair for the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers at the end of this month.
Bafana will play Ghana at FNB Stadium on 25 March and then travel away to play Sudan three days later.
Ntseki’s side are currently joint-top of their qualifying group, alongside Ghana, with nine points from four games, but Sudan trail by just three points and it promises to be a tense struggle for the two available places at next year’s Afcon finals.
Zungu has been battling for game time since joining Glasgow Rangers on loan in October, and recently landed in hot water with the Scottish giants after breaching Covid regulations by going to a party with some team-mates.
At one stage, it appeared his Rangers career was over, but after apologising, the midfielder has returned to the squad, coming off the bench in a Europa League win over Antwerp and in a Scottish Premier League win at Livingstone.
“The club had a DC (disciplinary hearing) and decided to address it (his behaviour) in the way they have, and he was in the team in the Europa League. We respect the independence of the club, but because he is a national team player, we had to address the issue. I spoke to Bongani after the DC, and he explained what happened. Hopefully he has learned. I saw an Instagram post where he said people were building walls to block his path. I told him that the only person that can block his path is Bongani Zungu,” said Ntseki.
Khune was also in the squad for the previous two Afcon qualifiers against Sao Tome, but his call-up is still a surprise because the former Bafana number one’s goalkeeping has been poor at Kaizer Chiefs for much of this season.
Only this weekend, he made some questionable errors as Chiefs were hammered 4-0 by Wydad Casablanca in the Caf Champions League.
“When it comes to...Khune, he made glaring mistakes against SuperSport and Black Leopards. When I spoke to (goalkeeping coach) Lee Baxter, he said they brought Khune to a meeting to find out what happened. He explained it was ‘just one of those mistakes’ you want to forget. Any human being has bad patches.”