Bafana Bafana head coach Hugo Broos admits their Strength and Conditioning Coach Kopano Melesi will hold a crucial role ahead of their Africa Cup of Nations clash against Tunisia.
Melesi, who’s currently working in Saudi Arabia and previously with the ASPIRE Academy outside of his role with the national team has gone largely under the radar since first joining the South African football structures back in 2015 with Amajita.
But zooming in on the conditioning, recovery and fitness of the squad at the tournament, with the likes of Mothobi Mvala, who was a doubt to make the trip to Ivory Coast playing two full 90-minute fixtures, a prime example.
Sinesipho Mali joined the squad as an analyst just prior to the tournament, and Broos also stated he’s played his part in their preparations for the continental showpiece.
“It’s very important [our analysis and strength and conditioning coach] and maybe now the physical coach is the most important, he has to show us and tell us what we can do and how we have to do it,” Broos stated.
“We have to try to recuperate the team tomorrow at kickoff, so yesterday it was only half an hour and not more, today it will be a little bit more but not really [intensive] training because you need to be very careful of fatigue.
“But I’m not worried about it, I see the players, [and] how they are in training, they enjoy it and that’s important, we will be ready tomorrow.”
The 2017 AFCON winning coach says he’s not concerned about not being able to compete with the North Africans, who’ve had an extra rest day since their 1-1 draw with Mali, which has them on one point and at the bottom of Group E.
But should they beat South Africa and Namibia stun the West Africans, Bafana could be eliminated from the competition – which is a worse case scenario as they could also win the group and remain in Korhogo for the last-16 round of the competition.
“As I said, we have one day less than Tunisia after playing two games, I think with the victory of Sunday and what I saw yesterday in training, it won’t be really a problem,” Broos said ahead of the game.
“I think the motivation is so high, so big in our team, the mentality is so good and they know they can achieve something that we all wished we came here, I think they are ready to go to the limit tomorrow and they will fight for every meter and second of the game to have a good result and achieve the second [win] too.”
The two sides meet on Wednesday at the Amadou Gon Coulibaly Stadium at 17h00 before DR Congo and Tanzania face off at the same venue.