Bafana Bafana will continue to monitor a knee injury to midfielder Kagiso Dikgacoi, but are confident he will be fit for Saturday’s African Nations Cup 2013 opener against Cape Verde.
Dikgacoi sat out yesterday morning’s training session at a sunny Orlando Stadium, after twisting his knee in the goalless draw with Algeria on Saturday at the same venue.
The early prognosis, however, is that the injury is minor, and not a cause for too much concern.
Dikgacoi is a likely starter against the Blue Sharks, even if his form has not really come to the fore in Bafana’s last couple of warm-up matches.
Bafana coach Gordon Igesund admitted that Dikgacoi’s fitness was not quite at peak level even before this injury, and should the 28-year-old Crystal Palace midfielder miss out on Saturday, Kaizer Chiefs’ Reneilwe Letsholonyane is the man most likely to step into the breach.
Letsholonyane, might, in any case, give Bafana an attacking impetus from the centre of midfield that looked sorely lacking for much of the Algeria clash, while Dikgacoi and Dean Furman were paired in the middle of the park.
Igesund had the blinkers on following the draw with Algeria, steadily pursuing an attitude of extreme optimism despite a dreadful display. The Bafana coach insisted that his side played well, and that all would be well on the goal-scoring front come the clash with Cape Verde.
Successive goalless draws indicate otherwise, but a nation hopes he is proved correct, and goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune was certainly dancing to the same tune as his coach after training yesterday, when he described Bafana as “deadly in front of goal.”
“Other teams that come to play Bafana know we are deadly in front of goal,” he said.
“They come and they are organised and are doing well defensively. We have been doing well going forward, we just couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net.
“We have been working very hard on this in training. We have been working on our finishing since the coach took over.”