It might be classified by the South African Football Association (Safa) as a training outing and will therefore not go into the Fifa record books as an official international, but Swaziland team manager Polycarp Dlamini says Bafana Bafana should not expect a romp in the park at Ellis Park on Tuesday night.
”We are happy to abide by Safa’s wishes not to regard the game as an official international,” said Dlamini, ”but we intend approaching the match as though it was an official international — and if we beat Bafana it will be a feather in our cap.”
Training outing on or not, South Africans will be viewing the proceedings with more than casual curiosity in view of the fact that it will be the first time renowned Brazilian coach Carlos Alberto Parreira will lead a Bafana team on to the field.
And whatever the game is called, it will be of some considerable significance for a relatively youthful and under-strength Bafana squad — which is devoid of overseas-based players and those from high-riding Mamelodi Sundowns — if they achieve both a victory and produce an impressive level of football.
With the wholesale absence of top players, Safa probably decided against giving the game an official tag as an insurance against the spectre of an embarrassing defeat.
But this in itself seems to defeat the purpose of the game as a warm-up for next week’s African Nations Cup qualifier, with no more than one or two of the players on view at Ellis Park likely to be in the line-up against Chad.
Swaziland’s planning, as illustrated by Dlamini, appears a good deal more logical, with the team against Bafana made up mainly of the players who will feature in the African Nations cup qualifier against Kenya.
”That is our prime objective,” said the Swaziland manager, ”to give the players who will face Kenya a chance to gel — and test them in an away fixture against opposition who could pose problems.”
Included in the Swazi squad are four players from South Africa’s leagues, namely SuperSport United’s Tony Tsabedze and Dennis Masina, and Wonder Nhleko and Siza Dlamini from Mvela League club FC AK.
The Bafana squad, while containing promising players, is largely inexperienced at national level and it seems a gross mistake on the part of the Premier Soccer League to have scheduled the Absa Cup game between Sundowns and Maritzburg United 24 hours after Bafana face Swaziland — thereby ruling out players of the calibre of Calvin Marlin, Vuyo Mere, Benson Mhlongo, Surprise Moriri, Godfrey Sapula and others.
But Parreira says the purpose of the Ellis Park game is simply to embark on the first steps towards the challenging 2010 World Cup and for the players to enjoy themselves in an international environment.
The enjoyment, however, would undoubtedly be soured if it is not accompanied by an emphatic victory. — Sapa