Kaizer Chiefs product explains injury ‘madness’ after missing out on World Cup squad

Kaizer Chiefs Academy graduate Siyabonga Ngezana was among the surprise omissions from the World Cup-bound Bafana Bafana despite his displays for FCSB.

The 28-year-old played a crucial role in the qualifiers, where South Africa topped Group C ahead of Nigeria, who finished second. Benin, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho were the other nations pooled together with Hugo Broos’ men for the 2026 FIFA global outing.

A section of stakeholders feel fitness concerns were the reason why the centre-back was not considered since he has been in and out of the FCSB squad.

At some point, club owner Gigi Becali argued it was ‘madness‘ for Ngezana not to accept surgery on what he felt was a niggling injury. However, the South Africa international has now explained his reasons.

Why Ngezana didn’t want to be operated on

“My injury is not a major thing that will need surgery; it is something that can wait for a bit of time and do it because if I do the operation now, recovery will take a long time. I respect my club a lot, and refusal came from a good place,” Ngezana told FARPost.

“So I had to take some rest to manage it, as I had played a lot of games and I didn’t have any break. I went to AFCON and kept on playing a lot of games, and we also had many injuries in our team, so the issue was the [heavy] schedule, so that’s why I had a bit of a problem with my knee. I did some treatment, and I got back.

“The club thought that the knee might be a big problem in future, so that’s why they wanted to offer me surgery, so I was like: ‘No, let us treat it first, then see if in future it keeps coming back, then we can consider the surgery,’ but now I’m fine due to the treatment that I took,” he concluded.