Baxter slams French team, threatens to report it to Fifa
Bafana Bafana coach Stuart Baxter believes that RC Strasbourg Alsace don't want to release striker Lebohang Mothiba.
Stuart Baxter, coach of South Africa (Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix)
This comes after the club informed the South African national team that the striker has an injury that will take 10 to 15 days to heal.
Baxter has requested to see scan performed on the player.
“Let me just let you into the world of the South African national team coach.
“You select your squad and then you get the player before the game asking if he can come a day late; obviously some sort of pressure from his club,” Baxter told the media.
“We then have the game and the day of the game we get a very cryptic email from his club secretary saying he has a physical problem. We don’t get any contact from the doctors, so we tried to contact the doctor,” he added.
“Last night (Sunday) later at 11:30 the doctor knocks on my door and says actually we got an email from them (Strasbourg) saying that he’s going for the scan,” revealed the coach.
“The doctor, now when we landed in Durban, gets another email saying that he has a grade two hamstring tear, which is not going to be healed within 10 to 15 days.
“So, I say to the doctor, given the way this has gone down, I want a picture. I want a scan, an actual scan that you can look at and you can say to me ‘Coach, this is not so bad, bring him here we’ll assess him’, or ‘coach forget about this one, you need to call someone up’,” said Baxter.
“Until we have that scan, I think the way this has gone down has been totally amateurish and therefore I’m going to make a decision whether I recommend to take them to Fifa to report them for disrupting our camp,” he continued.
“Or we’ll look at the scan and say it’s not worth it and let’s just get on with our life and bring someone else in,” concluded he coach.
