Pretoria – More often than not any team at the top of the league table in any country is responsible for supplying the national team with a number of players.
However, that is not that case with current PSL log leaders Mamelodi Sundowns, who top the Absa Premiership standings with 20 points so far this season. Despite the club’s fine showing, there are only two Sundowns players in the current Bafana Bafana set-up. Besides midfielders Bongani Zungu and Hlompho Kekana, who are in the Bafana team to face Spain and Swaziland, none of the Sundowns players have made the grade in coach Gordon Igesund’s latest squad. This is largely due to the fact that majority of the in-form regulars at Sundowns are not from these shores.
With no fewer than 10 acquisitions made by Pitso Mosimane this season, some players who were regulars for club and country, have lost out on places in the national team and at Sundowns.
Striker Katlego Mphela and left-back Punch Masenamela, who were in the Bafana squad in recent years, are among those relegated to the stands. Sundowns’s defensive paring comprises Hollander Alje Schut and Ghanaian Rashid Sumalia. Sundowns fullbacks – Bryce Moon and Tebogo Langerman don’t appear to be on the radar of the Bafana coach.
For Igesund, it might be sad that most of the players at the team he led to glory six seasons ago can’t make his team. The Sundowns attack is dominated by non-South Africans. If it is not Zimbabwean star Khama Billiat mesmerising defenders, it’s either Togolese international Dove Wome or Warriors forward Cuthbert Malajila giving goalkeepers nightmares. The trio has account for close to half of Sundowns’s goals in the league this season.
In a country short on attacking players, the sight of a big team importing attackers is set to compound matters for Igesund.
In contrast to Sundowns, Igesund looks set to get some spin-offs from Orlando Pirates’s impressive run in the CAF Champions League. Pirates surpassed expectations this year by reaching the final won by Egyptian giants Al Ahly. From the Pirates team, Igesund has called up eight players for the squad to face Swaziland in a friendly tonight.
Igesund, who led Pirates to PSL triumph in 2002/03, is hoping the experience Pirates players gained from the Champions League, where conditions are not as easy as in the PSL, will come in handy for his team that desperately needs resuscitation following failures in Brazil World Cup qualifiers and the Africa Cup of Nations.
Igesund may like to build his team around the likes of Andile Jali, Roy Mahamutsa, Thabo Matlaba and Happy Jele, who endured and withstood rigorous challenges in Pirates’s campaign in the Champions League.
Pretoria News