Denmark-based Siyabonga Nomvete, the 20th and final player to arrive at Bafana Bafana’s Johannesburg training camp, made a belated appearance on Wednesday — but questions were still raised over whether he would be included in the starting line-up against Chad in the African Nations Cup qualifier in Ndjamena on Saturday.
The unpredictable former Kaizer Chiefs player said a connecting flight from his home base in Aalborg to Copenhagen on Monday had been cancelled — resulting in a crucial delay that affected new coach Carlos Alberto Parreira’s induction programme with his players.
But Nomvete indicated an eagerness to impress Parreira by turning up at Wednesday afternoon’s training session only hours after his arrival in South Africa.
His prospects of playing on Saturday were further enhanced by Parreira’s decision to revise the team’s programme and hold a final training session on home soil on Thursday morning shortly before the departure of the squad for Chad.
But Parreira, a coach imbued with a reputation for conservatism throughout his career, could well plump for playing a solitary striker and utilising the increasingly more popular 4-5-1 formation instead of 4-4-2 at the outset.
Either way, Bafana’s training sessions provided ample evidence that Parreira had more or less settled on his starting line-up, which could emerge from the following 12 players: Rowen Fernandez, Cyril Nzama, Nasief Morris, Aaron Mokoena, Lucas Thwala, Steven Pienaar, Godfrey Sapula, Macbeth Sibaya, Elrio van Heerden, Sibusiso Zuma, Delron Buckley and Nomvete.
While weather forecasters were predicting a warm, 30-degree-Celsius day for Bafana’s final training session in Johannesburg on Thursday, it would hardly prepare them for the hot reception they can expect in arid Chad, where temperatures for Saturday’s game (5pm South African time) are anticipated to reach as high as 42 degrees. — Sapa