Bafana Bafana right back Kegan Johannes believes that Mozambique will not be a walk in the park when the two sides meet in the opening round of the Cosafa Cup at the Princess Magogo Stadium on Wednesday evening.

The 21-year-old was one of the 23 players to have made the cut for Helman Mkhalele’s final tournament squad following the selection of 30 players, who made up the preliminary squad.

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Although Johannes is making his debut for the national team, he is no stranger to this set-up, having featured in the South African U23 side that finished third in the 2019 Africa U23 Cup of Nations and ultimately qualified for the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Johannes insists that it was crucial for them to hit the ground running in what will be a repeat of last year’s quarter-finals.

“It feels great and quite an honour to be here given the quality of players the coaches have had to select the final Bafana Bafana squad from,” Johannes told Safa.

“I have been in the national set-up before when we qualified for the Tokyo Olympics Games. I take this now as an opportunity to build from that experience and work my way in being in the [pool] of potential Bafana Bafana players moving forward.

“We have a coach who believes in using young players and this group is also brought in with the 2024 Olympic qualifiers in mind. This squad is not just for now but the technical team is already thinking and building ahead for the future … which is brilliant in my view.

“Being the defending champions, we know what is expected of us.

“Our aspirations is to defend our title, starting with our fixture against Mozambique in the quarter-finals. Sure, we have beaten them in the previous edition but that does not mean that we will be walking into an easy match. In fact, they will come with the intention of throwing everything at us. We need to be able to take the punches, and fight to come out victorious in every fixture we will be playing in.”