The furrows on Shakes Mashaba’s forehead told the story of a frustrated man. But the Bafana Bafana coach avoided voicing it lest it be misconstrued as his being reliant on particular players.
Instead, Mashaba tried hard to dismiss Tsepo Masilela’s decision not to honour yet another call-up as not having much of an impact on his preparations for Saturday’s Africa Cup of Nations qualifier in Mauritania.
“That is why when we select a team we make sure we’ve got back-up players, because we anticipate these kind of problems. We don’t want to say this is a blow losing a player like that. That is why most of the times we always have two or three players in a position.”
The Kaizer Chiefs left-back, along with Thulani Serero of Ajax Amsterdam, are – according to their clubs – injured. But the South African Football Association (Safa) have instructed them to come so they can check on them themselves.
Team doctor Thulani Ngwenya said: “We received a message from Amsterdam saying that Serero is injured. They’ve sent us a scan but he has started training. So we said he should come through for a medical assessment so that we can make a determination on whether he is fit to continue with the team or not.
“And regarding Masilela, we communicated with the Kaizer Chiefs medical team and they sent us a report that he is also injured, he’s got a knee injury, we are still waiting for him to come through.”
Mashaba said whether the two players come to camp or not, he wouldn’t be replacing them although he has replaced the injured Thulani Hlatshwayo of Bidvest Wits with SuperSport United’s Clayton Daniels.
“We have replaced Tyson and we’ve brought in Clayton. If you look at our central defence position you will realise that we are pretty limited, that is why we called up another player. But for the other positions we have enough back-up.”
Masilela’s unavailability in particular must have irked the coach big time, the Amakhosi left-back kicking Mashaba in the teeth for a second time.
Back in January ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations finals in Equatorial Guinea, Mashaba called Masilela up as a replacement for the injured Patrick Phungwayo of Orlando Pirates. But the experienced World Cup player did not honour the call up, citing injury.
Mashaba hasn’t selected him since then but with Phungwayo and Thabo Matlaba – the incumbent left-back, also of Pirates – injured and Masilela in a good vein of form, the coach included him in his squad for the trip to Mauritania for Bafana’s second qualifying match for the 2017 showpiece.
That Masilela is said to be nursing a knee injury is perhaps surprising given that he had a storming game for his club on Saturday when Chiefs beat Bloemfontein Celtic 1-0 to advance to the MTN8 final. Masilela played the full 90 minutes, as he has done for most of this season, and walked off the field looking fully fit.
Serero, on the other hand, has an uncertain future at Ajax where he was said to be on his way out. The two players’ unavailability has clearly left Mashaba frustrated but he did his best to play it down.