Bantwana automatically progressed to the third round of qualifers after Kenya was suspended from football avtivities by FIFA last month. The South Africans will be looking to qualify for their third FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup [they qualified in 2010 and in 2018] which will be hosted in India after the previous one was postponed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bantwana Head Coach Simphiwe Dludlu selected 36 players during her last camp in March and has now called up 25 players for the upcoming qualifer.
Dludlu expressed her excitement at being able to get back onto the pitch with her team, but she is still dissapointed that she was not able to play a competetive match in March.
“We love coming together and playing international football, and this week will be no different. We will continue building from our last training camp, and will be hoping that the players are still on the level we left them on,”says Dludlu.
“Although we managed to get a practice match against a local club in our last camp, I still feel it would have been better to play against another country. We will be hard at work in the coming week preparing for this qualifer match against Ethiopia, who we have been studying;”concluded Dludlu.