Hugo Broos says Sierra Leone will give Bafana an idea of what to expect from Liberia

24 September 2022 - 10:41 By SITHEMBISO DINDI
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Bafana Bafana players during the South African men's national soccer team training session at Dobsonville Stadium on September 21.
Bafana Bafana players during the South African men's national soccer team training session at Dobsonville Stadium on September 21.
Image: Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images

Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos believes Sierra Leone are going to give him and his team an idea of what to expect from Liberia when they meet in the Afcon qualifiers next year.

Broos’ Bafana are set to take on the Stars of Leone in a friendly match at FNB Stadium on Saturday (3pm) before playing Botswana on Tuesday at the same venue.

The friendly matches form part of preparations for the all-important Afcon qualifiers that SA will play at home on March 20 and away on March 28.

Bafana needs to win those matches at all costs after they kicked off their qualifiers with a 1-0 defeat to Morocco in July.

Broos believes they couldn’t have found a better opponent to help them prepare for Liberia than Sierra Leone as the two national teams have a lot of similarities.

“Sierra Leone are a team that is more like Liberia, so therefore it will be a good preparation for us to play against such an opponent.”

The Bafana coach also revealed he is planning to give every player in camp a chance to play in the two friendly matches.

“We are playing two different teams (in Sierra Leone and Botswana), so the team that will play tomorrow (Saturday) will be different to that which will play against Botswana on Tuesday,” Broos said.

“We will give every player minutes to play so that we can have a good evaluation of the group after these two friendly games.

“Ronwen (Williams) will start the game tomorrow (Saturday), but it will be Veli (Mothwa) who will start the game against Botswana. Every player will get the same amount of minutes to play.”

Broos also confirmed he will have another chance to hold a camp in November during the Fifa World Cup and hope they will play friendly matches in what would be their final preparations for the games against Liberia.

“We received a letter from Fifa confirming that from November 14 to 20 is a Fifa break, so that means we can organise a camp in November as I wished to do,” Broos said.

“That’s good news because if we didn’t have that camp in November it would be six months after these friendly games before we could see each other to prepare for the game against Liberia.

“We will try to have two friendly games during that week so that we can have a good preparation for those extremely important games.”

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