Hugo Broos, South Africa’s Belgian head coach, deserves a significant share of the credit for Bafana Bafana reaching the World Cup knockout stages for the first time in their rather chequered history. The country had been absent from the tournament since they hosted it in 2010 and participated only twice before that, in 1998 and 2002. A wave of unbridled excitement was triggered when Broos ended the long wait to qualify.
“The question I always asked myself is: ‘Why is South Africa not a dominating country in Africa?’” Broos said in a recent radio interview. “When I came here, I had a plan. I kept the plan till the end, till the results were there, because I knew that was the way to do it.”
Given that he plans to leave the job – and coaching – after the World Cup, the 74-year-old is fortunate to experience a career finale that came quite close to not happening as a result of a self-inflicted qualification wound by the South African Football Association (Safa).
The midfielder Teboho Mokoena, man of the match in South Africa’s second game against Czechia and back after suspension for Sunday’s last-32 tie against the co-hosts Canada, nearly cost his country their place. He was fielded in a qualifier against Lesotho despite being suspended as a consequence of two yellow cards, prompting Fifa to dock South Africa three points. Bafana Bafana squeezed in by finishing one point ahead of Nigeria, who entered the playoffs, and Benin in their group.
Vincent Tseka, the team’s administrative manager, is primarily responsible for keeping abreast of players’ bookings and suspensions, but a Safa investigation absolved Tseka – now part of an administrative managerial team of three at the World Cup – of blame because he reportedly left the bench to get ice for the team, before Mokoena received the booking that earned him the suspension.
“How can this be taken as a credible excuse for not doing his job?” a former Safa official said. “In any other country where football is managed seriously, Tseka would have been fired for that unpardonable blunder. But there seems to be no consequence in Safa for failing to do one’s duty.”
Fortunately for South Africa, the lacklustre Super Eagles, whose miserable form ensured they missed out on a second successive World Cup, were unable to take advantage of the deduction.
Mokoena admitted the experience weighed heavily on him. “It was a crazy few months of my life because it affected me a lot – my performance at the club [Mamelodi Sundowns] – because I couldn’t even speak about it,” he said last year. “The only people who understood what was happening were my family and my friends because I told them about it.”
Without big-name players from Europe, Broos has, against expectations, forged a group from the Premier Soccer League into a functional side. “Everything started four years ago, when I gave opportunities to players that were not [Mamelodi] Sundowns players, that were not [Orlando] Pirates players or [Kaizer] Chiefs players,” Broos said. “I took players from Cape Town [City], I took players from Baroka [United] and everybody was angry.
“They wondered what I was doing with those players, because I did not call players that many felt should be in the team. I had a plan and the main thing about this plan was to build a team. You need [young] players who are hungry, who are motivated. It took a year before we had the right players. For every position, we had a profile of the player that we wanted.
“South African players are good technically and 20 years ago if you were technically good, you were a very good player. This is not the case now. To be at the top level, you also need power, you need physique, you need a lot more than technique.”
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Broos’s tactical approach and selections were savagely criticised after the tepid performance in a 2-0 defeat by Mexico at the Azteca in the tournament’s opening match and 1-1 draw with Czechia, secured by Mokoena’s 83rd-minute penalty. That did not go down well with the frank-talking Belgian, who waited until the 1-0 victory over South Korea to hit back at his critics.
“I’m very proud of my team and I think we gave a really good answer to all those big mouths from previous weeks who wanted us to change things and wanted to tell us what we need to do,” he said. “We did what I wanted to do and this is the result. I’m happy for my team.”
Many in South Africa are bubbling with confidence that beating Canada at Los Angeles Stadium is achievable, but the defensive midfielder Aubrey Modiba is cautious. “You can’t take any team here for granted. There have been a lot of upsets.”
The debutants Cape Verde, whose tactical discipline, energy and fortitude have taken them into the last 32 at the expense of Uruguay, have eloquently made this point.