Following his penalty shootout heroics in Saturday’s Africa Cup of Nations quarter-final, Bafana Bafana captain Ronwen Williams may well be the right guy to save the country’s economy.
Williams saved four penalties in a man-of-the-match performance against Cape Verde, sending South Africa through to the last four of the competition for the first time in more than two decades.
The Mamelodi Sundowns player gave credit to the national team’s analysts for guiding him with lots of video playbacks of Cape Verde’s penalty takers, on where their kicks would land.
His saves have garnered praise across the football world and his teammate for club and country, Grant Kekana, was all praise for the skipper.
“He is a world-class goalkeeper,” Kekana told BBC Sport Africa.
“I think he should be made the minister of finance, he can save South Africa’s economy,” the defender added, jokingly.
“We understand that if we don’t concede you don’t lose games. So we try so hard to work as a team. We start defending from the front to give us the chance of winning the game.”
Bafana must take on tournament favourites Nigeria next and Kekana believes that planning is everything ahead of the showdown.
“It’s another tough opponent. Nigeria have a lot of quality players but we believe in ourselves,” he said.
“We’re gonna go to the drawing board, plan accordingly, and give ourselves a chance of getting a positive result against them.”
The clash kicks off at 7 pm on Wednesday before Ivory Coast takes on DR Congo in the second semifinal at 10 pm.
Pictured above: Ronwen Williams.
Image source: @thabisothema
