REVEALED: Overseas-based stars expected in SA Olympics squad

With the South African Under-23 squad for the Tokyo Olympics expected to be announced on Saturday, Phakaaathi understand that coach David Notoane has included overseas based players Luther Singh and Lyle Foster on his list.

OPINION: Notoane’s ‘leaked’ Tokyo 2020 selection is an absolute shocker

A couple of weeks ago, there was a leaked team list of the SA Under-23  Olympics squad which only had local based players.

The squad is expected to leave for Tokyo on 8 July and the leaked squad was apparently a squad sent to the PSL (Premier Soccer League) and that is why it did not contain overseas-based players.

The SA Under-23 coach has had some difficulties in trying to secure some of his troops playing abroad with teams declining to release the players due to Covid-19 and he also had some positive cases in the squad.

This, forced Notoane to prepare his charges without some of his key players.

The team even saw their Olympics preparations tournament in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) being canceled because of the pandemic and recently their trip to Saudi Arabia was also called off.

However, the squad did manage to play a two-legged friendly games against Egypt, but things didn’t go so well.
They lost the first encounter 2-0 to the Egyptians, before losing the final match 3-0.

At the moment, Notoane has held a training camp in Johannesburg for a week now ahead of the Olympics squad announcement and says he is happy with the way things have turned out at the training camp.

“We are excited to have our preparations going and to have a few of our players who were in isolation join the team. We have a local friendly coming up and that will give us a good measure of the match conditioning and physical readiness,” said coach Notoane.

“So far we are getting everything on track. Slowly but surely.”

At the Olympics, the team has been placed in Group A where they will take on hosts Japan on 22 July, three days later, they meet with France before their final group phase tie against Mexico on 28 July.