Coach Desiree Ellis has announced a strong Banyana Banyana squad for the FIFA Women’s World Cup Intercontinental play-offs that kick off later this month.
She is counting on the experienced players in her team to see them through to the next phase of the play-offs.
Wendy Shongwe, who played in the World Cup in Australia, has returned to the team and is the only player who was not in the WAFCON squad in July and August.
Banyana Banyana failed to qualify outright for next year’s tournament in Brazil when they participated in this year’s Women’s AFCON in Morocco.
The team is scheduled to play Chinese Taipei on the 28th of this month, before facing Ecuador on the 1st of December and Uzbekistan on the 5th of December.
Ellis says, “FIFA has said it’s 23 only, which makes it very difficult. You are also looking for multi-functional players that can play more than one position to make sure that you have all your bases covered because the squad is much smaller than what you worked with before, for example at WAFCON where we could take 26. The biggest shock for me is that players still don’t have passports; if they do, they’re not valid. We spoke about this passport issue a long time ago. And because of such reasons, we couldn’t have a look at certain players, especially exams, injuries. It’s challenging to select a squad when you have players who are omitted because of all these reasons.”
