READ: Bafana star: I'm grateful to Baxter "The reality is that we prepared as best as we can, according to the plan the coach had given us. There were two games that were requested in terms of the preparation. The one was Ghana and the second one that we confirmed, as we said before and made public, was against Angola. "We had sat down with the Angolans the night before the game and they had agreed, everything was sorted, only for the Angolans to arrive at their team base and say they've decided not to play the game. Their reason was that they had no training facilities, so we accepted that. But that's part of tournament preparations and I think the team put it behind them." He continued: "The issue regarding the flight challenges, those are things that happen quite often, where you get changes and airlines overbook. We announced the squad of Sunday and the squad was leaving on Monday, so there were one or two challenges in getting the right number of seats. But then again, that's water under the bridge. It was resolved."
SAFA happy with Bafana Bafana's AFCON preparation
Despite a few challenges, South African Football Association CEO Russel Paul says Bafana Bafana prepared as best as they could leading up to the Africa Cup of Nations. Bafana played only one match leading up to AFCON against Ghana, while Angola pulled out of on the eve of their match just a few days before the start of the competition. There was also confusion when Bafana were meant to fly out to Dubai for their preparations, but there was an issue with the bookings with the airline. The team was knocked out of the competition by Nigeria earlier this week, in the last round of eight.
READ: Bafana star: I'm grateful to Baxter "The reality is that we prepared as best as we can, according to the plan the coach had given us. There were two games that were requested in terms of the preparation. The one was Ghana and the second one that we confirmed, as we said before and made public, was against Angola. "We had sat down with the Angolans the night before the game and they had agreed, everything was sorted, only for the Angolans to arrive at their team base and say they've decided not to play the game. Their reason was that they had no training facilities, so we accepted that. But that's part of tournament preparations and I think the team put it behind them." He continued: "The issue regarding the flight challenges, those are things that happen quite often, where you get changes and airlines overbook. We announced the squad of Sunday and the squad was leaving on Monday, so there were one or two challenges in getting the right number of seats. But then again, that's water under the bridge. It was resolved."
READ: Bafana star: I'm grateful to Baxter "The reality is that we prepared as best as we can, according to the plan the coach had given us. There were two games that were requested in terms of the preparation. The one was Ghana and the second one that we confirmed, as we said before and made public, was against Angola. "We had sat down with the Angolans the night before the game and they had agreed, everything was sorted, only for the Angolans to arrive at their team base and say they've decided not to play the game. Their reason was that they had no training facilities, so we accepted that. But that's part of tournament preparations and I think the team put it behind them." He continued: "The issue regarding the flight challenges, those are things that happen quite often, where you get changes and airlines overbook. We announced the squad of Sunday and the squad was leaving on Monday, so there were one or two challenges in getting the right number of seats. But then again, that's water under the bridge. It was resolved."