South Africa are set to return to international football later this month when Bafana Bafana take on Guinea and France in back-to-back friendlies in Belgium and Lille, respectively.
Ahead of those encounters, national team coach Hugo Broos named a provisional 29-man squad on Tuesday that includes four overseas-based players and the balance from 13 of the DStv Premiership's 16 sides.
The Belgian tactician has since explained that his selection is geared towards improving on the country's failure to qualify for the 2022 FIFA World Cup and that it served primarily as preparation for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations later this year.
"After the qualifiers for the World Cup, we evaluated the team and saw that there were some weaknesses, certainly in the game against Ghana. The team was not ready to play such a game," Broos said in a statement released by the South Africa Football Association.
"We saw that Ghana started the game very aggressively and we didn't have an answer to that, so that was one of the things we saw, and therefore we started to look for other players and see where we could improve the team.
"So these two games are not really about the results but more about preparation for the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in June. So there will be new players, we will see if they are playing well in their clubs and then see if they perform for Bafana, which is a level higher.
"Let us hope that they improve the team. So we are using these games to be ready for June and know that we have a stronger team than the team that played in the [World Cup] qualifiers.
"These are friendly games, but they are more about preparation. These games are an opportunity for us to try some things. You cannot try things when you are playing qualifiers, you have to be sure when you put your team on the pitch.
"You have to be sure that those are the right players in the right positions. Now we can try and we can see what these players are giving to the team. I'm thinking about [Goodman] Mosele, I'm thinking about [Bandile] Shandu, I'm thinking about [Fagrie] Lakay.
"Those players can be an improvement for us. The result for me is not so important, not at all. But I want to see the things we try in those games can be an improvement for the team or not."