Bafana Bafana coach Stuart Baxter has confirmed that the camp suffered an injury scare when they were hit with the news that Thulani Serero sustained an ankle injury.
Bafana will face Nigeria on Saturday at the FNB Stadium in what is a crucial game if Baxter’s team are going to realise their goal of qualifying for next year’s African Cup of Nations.
The South African national team will then travel to Durban to play Paraguay in the Nelson Mandela Challenge at the Moses Mabhida Stadium on Tuesday.
A headline addition to Baxter’s injury-hit Bafana squad was Dutch-based midfielder Serero and when news emerged from the Dutch media on Sunday that Serero, who returned to the Bafana set-up for the first time since snubbing a call-up in November last year, had picked up a knock in Vitesse’s 2-1 victory over Utrecht on Sunday, his participation in the upcoming fixtures was placed in doubt.
Baxter, however, revealed that both Serero and Ronwen Williams, who also provided a scare after picking up a knee injury, should both recover in time and he has thus decided not to call up any replacements.
‘We had two scares – one was Ronwen Williams. We got a call from [Dr] Jon Patricios at the sports clinic saying that he had a slight knee strain and they would be examining him this morning,’ revealed Baxter at a press conference on Monday.
‘The ultrasound didn’t find any tears, but it could take him around 24-48 hours for it to settle. So he won’t be training with us for 48 hours, and we do hope it will settle.
‘We’re not going to call in another third keeper; we’re going to keep Ronwen because we think he’s going to be OK.
‘The second one was Thulani Serero. We didn’t receive anything from the club or Thulani, but through media in Holland, they said he had an ankle injury.
‘We knew he was on the plane [to South Africa] but we didn’t know anything about his injury, so we held our breath a little bit.
‘When he got off [the flight] he said no, he had a little laceration and got five stitches on the gash, and the sutures should come out today [Monday]. He should be able to join full training tomorrow [Tuesday].
‘We did afterwards get a doctor’s report from Holland. So, those two should be OK within the next 24-48 hours,’ concluded the British coach.
Photo: Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix
