Danny Jordaan, Chan, January 2014Ignat Manjoo

Danny Jordaan confirms busy 2018 for underperforming Bafana Bafana

Safa president Danny Jordaan is confident they will have opponents lined up for the March international Fifa break, with Uganda and the Netherlands as potential candidates.

“We have to play, we have to play,” Jordaan told the media.

Caf decided not to use the March Fifa week for the 2019 Afcon qualifying campaign to allow the five World Cup representatives ample time to prepare for the tournament.

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They have since moved the dates for the Afcon qualifying matches to September, and Jordaan says there will be no time for Stuart Baxter’s man to use this occasion to chin up their feet.

“We are going to draw up a programme and we have already started. Some of that are the Nelson Mandela centenary celebrations and other matches," he continued.

“We also have a cooperation agreement with the Dutch and part of that is to play because they have also failed to qualify for the World Cup.

“We have not set a date for the match yet and we will speak to them about that. We are going to work with other countries also,” Jordaan said.

The domestic season set to conclude on May 12, and depending on the Nedbank Cup finalists, Baxter may be forced to select a squad solely of international based players.

Another contentious issue they will bring to Baxter’s attention is the use of youngsters than the recycling of players who are approaching their sell by date.

“We will ask Baxter, even if he plays only the overseas-based players who are back in the country, like Lebo Mothiba for an example, Luther Singh and Tyroane Sandows," he added.

“These players he must begin to look at them so that when he starts building a team at least he has looked at them. Thabo Cele is another one.

“There are many of these players that never had a look in that he must look at now,” Jordaan concluded.

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