In an exclusive interview with SABC Sport, shortly after head coach Hugo Broos announced his 26-man squad for the World Cup, Ngwenya explained that they had to work around the clock, conducting tests on the two players. Modiba ended up making the team, but Ngwenya says with Morena it couldn’t work out.”It was a challenge, a big challenge, it was the biggest test you know in the history of my medical career in sports medicine. This was the biggest, biggest, biggest challenge. You would remember that we had Aubrey [Modiba] that pulled his hamstring during the CAF Champions League first leg and the team worked so hard and they managed to get Aubrey ready.
He is now announced because we have cleared him to be part of the team going forward,” said Ngwenya
READ: Two upcapped players make Bafana Bafana 26-man FIFA World Cup squad
“The team is still going to work on him but we are confident that come the 11th, Aubrey will be ready. The second one was Thapelo [Morena], very, very sad.”
“We have tried, we have given it our best shot in terms of trying to manage him, in terms of giving him support. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get to where we wanted to be. We did a rescan today. Unfortunately, it was not good.”Morena missed the two matches in the CAF Champions League final against AS FAR of Morocco, even though he travelled to Morocco for the second leg. But Modiba had remained behind and ended up making the team, with the hope that he would fully recover during the tournament. For Morena, this was a very difficult moment as he had missed the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Morocco, also due to injuries, and Ngwenya says Broos was looking forward to having him for this World Cup.
Morena, a member of the 2016 Rio Olympic squad, had come a long way with this team under Broos, and after the squad announcement at the Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House, struggled with emotions, seeing his World Cup dream fade away. Mgwenya says this is very sad and they are going to need some support for him to deal with this.
As Bafana Bafana prepares for their final international friendly match on home soil, against Nicaragua tomorrow evening, before departing for Mexico this weekend, where they have another international friendly match against Jamaica, before their opening World Cup game against Mexico on the 11th of next month. Ngwenya says they are just hoping that there won’t be more injuries in the team and says they are looking at periodization processes to manage the load on the players, especially the Sundowns players who travelled last week to Morocco.