Believe it or not — as Ripley would have chronicled it — another Bafana Bafana player has ”vanished” on the hazardous road to Los Angeles for Concacaf’s Gold Cup tournament.
Bafana general manager Stanley ”Screamer” Tshabalala on Wednesday revealed that Helsonborg and former Supersport United striker or midfielder Thando Mngomeni has ”disappeared from the face of the earth — and no one seems to know what has happened to him”.
Apart from the multitude of South African overseas-based and local players who have been unavailable for the tournament in the United States — and a spate of others who have withdrawn at regular intervals from the Bafana squad for various reasons — Wits University goalkeeper Wayne Roberts on Saturday started the disappearance trend.
”And to this day,” said Tshabalala from Bafana’s camping headquarters on the outskirts of Los Angeles, ”we don’t know what happened to him. We heard he was on holiday in Cape Town. But there was no direct confirmation. He simply never turned up and never told us why.”
Now, it seems, the process has been repeated in the case of Mngomeni, whom coach Stuart Baxter had earmarked for a key role in his depleted line-up for the testing opening game against Mexico on Friday night (4am Saturday, South African time).
”You can imagine the coach is really furious about this latest development,” said Tshabalala. ”Thando was due to join up with the Bafana squad in London. But he simply did not turn up.
”His cellphone was switched off and officials of his Swedish club claim they are mystified by his whereabouts.”
To make matters worse, the six players who were delayed in Johannesburg in order to obtain United States visas — Thabang Radebe, Peter Petersen, Phil Evans, Siyabonga Nomvete, Elrio van Heerden and Stanley Kgatla — were only due in Los Angeles on Wednesday night, leaving Baxter with a tricky decision whether to consider them for the Mexico game after a gruelling 36-hour journey aggravated by continually changing time zones. — Sapa