The former Bafana Bafana captain, who suffered a heart attack recently, teamed up with the likes of Phil Masinga and Helman Mkhalele resulting in a 23-man squad that played some friendly matches against PSL and NFD sides.
Of those who made the cut in Tovey’s team, Bafana Dlamini was in Da Gama’s squad that travelled to Palestine recently and Sifiso Nkosi, who also went to Palestine, has kept his place in the team that travelled to Sudan for an All-Africa Games qualifier.
READ: Strong U-23 squad travels to Sudan
Da Gama feels Tovey deserves credit for the sterling job that he did in identifying the players across the country, resulting in the nation benefiting.
“Sifiso Nkosi and Bafana Dlamini were selected on merit. I watched the matches of the SAB selection team that Neil Tovey put together. They played against AmaZulu, Platinum Stars, Jomo Cosmos, Bidvest Wits and other teams. These boys were fantastic,” he tells snl24.com/kickoff.
“All credit must go to Neil, because he did a fantastic job in selecting that team. There are two or three other players we could have selected, but some were not available because of injuries,” he adds.
The Under-23s play the first-leg qualifier against Sudan on Sunday.