Bafana Bafana coach Stuart Baxter has given a rough outline on the national team's preparations for the upcoming 2019 AFCON.
Bafana missed out on the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations and World Cup 2018. Baxter's men secured their berth in this year's continental showpiece to kick off in Egypt on June 21 with a 2-1 victory over Libya last month.
Bafana have been pitted against Ivory Coast, Morocco and Namibia in Group D and Baxter has given an idea as to how their preparations are going to look like.
“Obviously we were waiting for the draw and now we’re going to negotiate with the clubs to find out exactly when we can get the players released,” Baxter said.
“I think we have to have that negotiation because it’s been a long season and we don’t want to abuse the players, and we certainly don’t want to burn them out so that neither club nor country benefits.
“The question then comes, can we use COSAFA as some sort of a preparation? We know we can’t get our foreign based players, but does it fit, when we’re maybe meeting Namibia or someone else.
“Then we’re planning to have a pre-camp somewhere in the middle east – we’ve been approached by a couple of the middle eastern countries to do that. Nothing is definite, but that was a thought.
“And then we’d drop into Egypt and have our final camp there, with a game against an opponent similar to the one we’re facing in the first game [Ivory Coast].
“So, that would be the rough planning we’ve got for AFCON.” - Sport24
