🇿🇦 How Mamelodi Sundowns forced South Africa - and their manager - to change
South Africa's dominant club team has set the tone for Bafana Banafa at the 2023 AFCON!
There were seven Barcelona players in the Spain team that started - and won - the 2010 World Cup final.
That one-club core gave Vicente del Bosque’s side an advantage. If international football denies players the repetition required to truly establish a clear identity as a team, Spain didn’t have this problem.
14 years on, the country that hosted the 2010 World Cup - and witnessed Spain’s Barcelona-led triumph - is seeking to do something similar, building their national team around the success of one club.
More than half of South Africa’s squad for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations play for Mamelodi Sundowns, the best club team in Africa.
So can Bafana Bafana’s core of Sundowns players help change the fortunes of national team that has grossly underachieved since winning AFCON for the first time in 1996?
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