Bafana — players and coach — need to get their act together in Liberia

Bafana Bafana are on the verge of another failure to qualify for an Africa Cup of Nations unless the players and their ill-tempered coach can get their act together.

The permutations after Friday's poor 2-2 draw against Liberia at Orlando Stadium are fairly simple. Bafana need a win in the return match at Samuel Kanyon Doe Stadium in Monrovia on Tuesday (6pm SA time) to clinch a place at the Nations Cup in Ivory Coast in June and July.

A draw by a scoreline of 3-3 or higher would see South Africa go level on two points with Liberia, but in second place in group K to Morocco (six points) given Caf's head-to-head rule would then give way to away goals.

But Bafana would then rely in Liberia not stunning the Atlas Lions in those teams' final match in Morocco in September and South Africa might need a similar shock result at home to the 2022 World Cup semifinalists (June) to be sure of progressing.

A 1-1 or 0-0 draw will leave Bafana below Liberia on the log on away goals and needing a win against Morocco and for Liberia to lose against the Atlas Lions. A scoreline of a 2-2 draw or less puts South Africa level with the Lone Stars and all sorts of calculations come into play that could give a mathematician a migraine.

This from a group where the expulsion of Zimbabwe left three teams and 67th-ranked Bafana just needing four points against 150th-ranked Liberia to progress.

That, as has been the case in the past, seemed entirely attainable even for a side as brittle as South Africa.

Enter Friday night's shocker, spurning a two-goal lead from Lyle Foster's brace by the 21st minute in a mistake-plagued, familiarly under-par performance where Bafana's bigger names chose poor options, froze and seemed — again — to simply lack the required motivation.

Enter, too, coach Hugo Broos's histrionics.

Fans putting the blame for the embarrassment on the players are not wrong — the men on the field must take much of the rap. But a coach storming off the field before the end of play, as Broos did when Mohammed Sangare scored a 91st-minute beauty to add to Tonia Tisdell's scrappy strike (68th), is unheard of in international football.

It surely is unprecedented in club football and even a schools' soccer coach should be embarrassed by such a dereliction of duty that could best be termed a hissy fit.

The action, along with Broos's attempt to send assistant coach Helman Mkhalele to the post-match press conference, raises questions of the 70-year-old Belgian's commitment to and respect for South African football and his job.

The timing of that could not be worse.

The players' weak display and the coach's mindless moments could be, at least partly, forgotten if Bafana beat Liberia in round 2, though Broos would surely still need a grilling from his employers on how it all almost went so wrong, and his part in it.

For the word “almost” to apply after Tuesday, though, Bafana will need to extricate themselves from a mess of seemingly low morale, lack of conviction and a coach who seems to think South African football owes him something before he's achieved anything for it.

And they have to do it against a team clearly well-motivated and whose coach Ansumana Keita promised to put the South Africans through hell on the tricky artificial surface of Monrovia's small but no doubt hostile 22,000-seat venue.

These are not conditions Bafana have always reacted well too.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Broos has sat with his players and apologised for his shenanigans on Friday and convinced them they have much to gain putting their own tardiness behind them and raising themselves for the battle.

Long-suffering Bafana supporters — those still left out there — will know not to hold their breath too detrimentally for such an outcome.

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