Former Banyana Banyana captain uncertain about SA defending WAFCON title

This comes after CAF postponed the tournament by a year and will now be played in July 2025 instead of this month.

Speaking exclusively to SABC Sport, Van Wyk believes a lot of the WAFCON-winning squad members will most likely have retired from Banyana come the next tournament in Morocco.

The African continent’s record holder of 185 caps hung up her boots last year – she was part of the team that won gold.

"There's a lot of players that are older that could retire before the next WAFCON, that could be a huge setback as well because you could have utilised that experience in the AFCON that should have been this year,” van Wyk said.

“So, you are looking at players that are coming in that do not have the tournament experience. All in all I think it should just be a good preparation for the coach and the team to prepare the players well, select the team carefully with a mixture of experience and upcoming players but it could be detrimental to the champions, defending champions but again it's a tournament of two weeks that you go and it can go either way.

“So, it's about preparing well mentally and physically for the team to go and compete again."

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The defender says the postponement of the WAFCON is most disappointing as it comes when there is more need for competitions for women.

"It's disappointing, it's really disappointing, there's already a lack of competition for women in South Africa and they take the one thing that the countries look forward to, to go and compete at the highest level in our continent,” she added.

“I feel they could have planned this better, they knew the Olympic Games would be this year, I think planning around it and organising could have happened a lot sooner to try and squeeze in somewhere this year.

“I mean it's been two years and they want to come in and compete once again but it's been taken away. So, I can see from a player's point of view how frustrating that must be, you prepare for something, you qualify for something and then it's pushed back a year."