Bafana Chan coach Ntseki welcomes Maema, reinforcements for Malawi clash

Bafana Bafana have been boosted by the availability of Mamelodi Sundowns midfielder Neo Maema ahead of the African Nations Championship (Chan) second-leg qualifier against Malawi at Loftus Versfeld stadium on Sunday. 

Coach Molefi Ntseki also welcomed Ndumulelo Maphangule and Simon Ramabu (Polokwane City), Victor Letsoalo and Kamogelo Sebelebele (TS Galaxy) and Siyanda Msani (University of Pretoria). 

Ntseki missed the services of the players during last week's first leg in a game that Malawi won 1-0 at home in Lilongwe. 

In preparation for the clash, SA played a training match against Motsepe Foundation Championship side Casric Stars at Loftus on Thursday and Ntseki is happy with preparations. 

“I think the first one was us playing the game we played in Malawi and the plan was to get a goal and not to concede. Unfortunately, we struggled with the game management,” he said. 

“Obviously when you have players who are not playing regularly in their teams and some of them without teams, we ended up conceding that odd goal in the last three minutes of the game.  

“But that did not make us feel bad about the team. We came out of that game with the best lessons we needed to take into the next game. Coming back to SA, we made requests to the clubs to release players, especially clubs that are not playing this weekend.  

“We are aware Chippa played Sundowns, Pirates played Golden Arrows and there is also the Nedbank Cup final this weekend.” 

Ntseki thanked the clubs who availed their players because he has a stronger and more balanced team going into Sunday’s clash.  

“The teams responded very positively because they ended up sending six of the players we needed in camp.”