Bafana Bafana move AFCON camp to Stellenbosch as SAFA wait on PSL

This was revealed by the South African Football Association’s CEO Lydia Monyepao following Saturday’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting at SAFA House.

READ: Mlungisi Mbunjana not anxious about Bafana Bafana AFCON selection

Initially, Bafana head coach Hugo Broos had planned to hold this camp at the University of Pretoria’s High Performance Centre, but, due to its unavailability, preparations will now be moved to Stellies’ High Performance Centre.

"We just started by highlighting Bafana's road to AFCON, in terms of the preparations, there are deadlines that have to be met in terms of submissions to CAF," explained Monyepao.

"There's also the list of players that will participate in Ivory Coast in January and where the team will be camping from 4-9 January 2024, which will be in Stellenbosch.

"This will be a training camp, even though ideally they wanted to be in either Potchefstroom or Pretoria, but the venues were not available due to international bookings that they had to take."

Meanwhile, SAFA and the Premier Soccer League look to be headed for another showdown as Monyepao revealed they will be following up on Broos’ request for the league’s programme to finish before Christmas.

As things stand, the PSL calendar will wrap up only on 31 December 2023, with most teams playing the day before, and the CEO says the PSL are reviewing their request.

"We have asked the PSL, upon looking at the calendar and realising that some teams are playing until the 30th of December, can they look at – in line with the coach's desires – finishing the league on the 23rd of December.

"This will allow the players to recover before they get to camp, so that we have a fresher squad, so to speak, when the team reports to camp.

"I've received correspondence from the [PSL] acting CEO [Mato Madlala] to say she's engaging the executive, and they will revert to us once the executive has considered the coach's submission on the matter."

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