Bafana’s tough ask

Afcon 2013: Igesund's "cheapies" bidding to upstage football's Money League

Bafana Bafana will need every breath of support from a sports-mad nation to win the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations. South Africa lacks quality now that its only genuine superstar, £4,8m rated Everton midfielder Steven Pienaar, has retired from internationals. This leaves only two of SA's squad worth over £1m on the global football market, a modest figure in current market conditions.

This puts SA coach Gordon Igesund at a significant disadvantage. Nigeria, for instance, will call on the Chelsea duo of John Obi Mikel and Victor Moses who are each worth as much as the £14m combined value of the entire 23-member SA squad. Cup favourites Ivory Coast are even further ahead in the money stakes with four of its likely team each valued over £10m – including Manchester City megastar Yaya Toure' whose estimated worth is £32m.
Data drawn from transfermarkt.co.uk, a global website which values professional footballers, ranks £2,6m SA defender Anele Ngcongca as the most valuable member of Igesund's squad. Ngcongca has been a regular at Racing Genk for the past six years. Genk currently lies sixth of the 16 teams in Belgium's Jupiler Pro League.
Bafana's only other pound millionaire is Swedish-based May Mahlangu. A talented midfielder with the credentials to set the tournament alight, Mahlangu is rated at £2,2m and the most valuable player in the Helsingborg IF team – winners of the Swedish league and cup double last season.
Igesund's captain Bongani Khumalo is the next most valuable member of the Bafana squad at £875 000. The defender is on the books of UK superclub Tottenham Hotspur but has yet to play a top-flight game for the London-based side. The 25-year-old defender is out on a year's loan and enjoying regular game time at PAOK, currently second in Greece's premier league. Khumalo will return to Tottenham at the end of the season.
One of SA's potential surprise packages of the tournament is 22-year-old Thulani Serero, a product of the Ajax Cape Town youth development programme. Serero, who transferred to Dutch parent club Ajax Amsterdam in July 2011, is already rated as being worth £875 000, a figure which might well have been a lot higher had he not been sidelined for the past three months through injury. Serero is an attacking midfielder and showed he was a star in the making by scoring three goals in his four Eredivisie appearances for Ajax before his injury – including both goals in September's 2-2 draw away to Heerenveen. Another European-based goal scorer who, if given the opportunity, could grab the spotlight for SA is 22 year old Tokelo Rantie, who has found the net six times in 13 games for Sweden's Malmo.
At the other end of the scale is the captain of England's League One team Oldham Athletic. The 24 year old midfielder Dean Furman is rated as being worth just £100 000 and with his club struggling in 18th place in what is effectively the UK's third tier, he has a rare opportunity to impress here. Most of the world's top clubs send scouts to the Nation's Cup – investigators who would otherwise never see Oldham's Number Eight.
Here's the full valuations of the Bafana Bafana squad drawn from the football professional's reference website, transfermarkt.co.uk:

International market valuations of the Bafana Bafana Afcon 2013 squad