SAZI HADEBE | Beware the ides of March: time for Broos to start delivering

There’s a lot that one can learn in 22 months in a new job. And that’s the time that the Belgian coach Hugo Broos has had as a head coach of Bafana Bafana.

I’m mentioning the length of time Broos has coached Bafana because it’s crunch time for him — a time to decide whether he’s made enough positive progress to keep his job.

We all know what the suits at the SA Football Association (Safa) are likely to do with Broos if he fails to take the team to the delayed 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast early next year. What is more intriguing is that Broos himself told us what we should do with him should he fail to take the team to Ivory Coast. “The life of a football coach depends on the results, so ... we’ll see,” that’s what Broos said in his first press conference in May 2021 after taking the job.

Broos added that qualifying for the 2022 Fifa World Cup was always going to be an impossible mission for Bafana, especially because he wanted to build his team using younger players. But ensuring that Bafana qualifies for Afcon 2023 was never going to be negotiable, stressed the 70-year-old former Belgium defender. “If we are not qualified for that (Afcon 2023), you can kill me,” Broos offered in his unveiling in 2021.   

Broos also said he will only know after a year if the Bafana job was the toughest he’s ever held in a long coaching career which started in his country in 1988. Now that he’s close to two years with Bafana, Broos will definitely have no excuse for not delivering what he promised when he took over from Molefi Ntseki.  

It’s time Broos settled on his A team and the way he wants to play. There’s been so much experimentation in the months leading to the Liberia game, but the Bafana coach no longer has space for more tinkering.

Not much has happened at Bafana since Broos ascended to the position, except coming close to qualifying for 2022 Fifa World Cup. Having been appointed a few months before the start of World Cup qualifiers, Broos was given a free pass by Safa, who said they’ll only start scrutinising his progress if the team were to miss going to the 2023 Afcon.

The remaining days in March will best tell us if Broos has something coming with Bafana. The good thing for Broos is that his next crunch assignment, do-or-die Afcon 2023 qualifiers against Liberia, comes at a time when he’s got plenty of promising players to pick from. But football being a contact sport, Broos will do well to pray that most of the players he will announce today for the Liberia game don’t get injured in club matches in the coming weekend.  

Those players include in-form strikers  such as Cassius Mailula at Mamelodi Sundowns, Percy Tau at Egyptian giants Al Ahly and Lyle Lakay, whose English Championship side Burnley play Manchester City in the FA Cup quarterfinal at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday.

On paper it looks easy for Bafana to qualify for Afcon 2023 if they beat Liberia at least at the Orlando Stadium next week Friday (March 24) and play to at least a draw in Libreville against the same opponents on March 28. So easy is Bafana’s path to Ivory Coast that they can qualify even if they play two 0-0 draws against Liberia and avoid heavy defeat against Morocco, the team that has already beaten Bafana (2-1) and Liberia (2-0) in the opening matches of Group K that has only three teams. But that it looks easier to qualify for Afcon 2023 than miss it means Broos has no chance of keeping his job if his team fails to beat Liberia — a team ranked 150th in the world.

All that Broos needs to do is to finish second behind Morocco in his group to make the 24 teams in Ivory Coast next year. But other than just qualifying, it’s time Broos settled on his A team and the way he wants to play. There’s been so much experimentation in the months leading to the Liberia game, but the Bafana coach no longer has space for more tinkering. That will have to start with the team Broos picks for Liberia. It must be the team that will have the bulk of the players he’ll potentially use in Ivory Coast and beyond.

So, as Broos reveals his latest team today (Thursday), he will be aware of how critical it is that his team wins against Liberia, if he is to avoid what he said we should to him should he fail to take Bafana to Afcon 2023. 

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