Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos believes his building blocks of the past two years have fallen into place and leaves zero possibility that his team will fail to qualify for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon).
Broos has reason for such optimism, not least that Zimbabwe's expulsion by Fifa means 67th-ranked South Africa’s progression to Ivory Coast 2023 from Group K rests on two matches against 150th-ranked Liberia where four points will clinch the deal.
With that in mind, qualification for the tournament moved from midyear 2023 to January and February next year over heat concerns would also ring a little hollow. It is not likely to earn Broos any great confidence from the South African public that a woefully underachieving Bafana are progressing notably.
More would be needed. Broos has emphasised youth and rebuilding, though backtracked on a few initial older omissions from the team whose hunger and fearlessness saw them run Ghana close in the 2022 World Cup qualifying group stages, bowing out on the same points and goal difference but just less goals scored.
Notably Mamelodi Sundowns’ peerless creative influence Themba Zwane was brought back. With a front line that also boasts in-form, promising attackers Lyle Foster, Monnapule Saleng, Downs’ find of the 2022-23 season Cassius Mailula and a Percy Tau regaining his stride at Al Ahly, Bafana should see off Liberia. Given this is Bafana, who have succumbed to poor capitulations in qualifiers to particularly low-ranked teams, including Seychelles and Cape Verde in recent years, that is also not a certainty.
And even Broos must know that negotiating past Liberia to a Nations Cup will constitute no form of arrival. Expecting his young team to go to Ivory Coast and win a Nations Cup — like Broos did with a young Cameroon in 2017 — would also be unrealistic. The Indomitable Lions have far more international pedigree, and a better talent production line, than South Africa.
What South Africans will hope for is that Bafana can go to the next Nations Cup and show signs of competitiveness — a semifinal placing or better would represent a sign of a pulse from the long-suffering patient.
Broos believes he has seen signs of a team coming together. Friendlies should never be taken as any reliable indicator of form ahead of competitive matches. But the coach believes last year’s matches in September and November, where he cast the net wider for players and found more pieces to his puzzle, showed South Africa will at least do the minimum of dispatching Liberia so Broos’ emerging combination can gain hugely-needed experience at a major tournament.
“You see that and you feel that,” he said of his confidence in South Africa's qualification.
“I see it from what we showed in [last year’s friendly] games, because we chose opponents who in September and November who you could compare with Liberia on the question of quality.
“We were very convincing against Sierra Leone. We had two tough games against Angola and Mozambique. We came back from a goal down and won 2-1 against Mozambique playing good football.
I think everything is a lot more calm now. There were a lot of critics and criticism, even from colleagues, and that hurts, and colleagues were saying things that were not true
— Hugo Broos
“The game against Botswana was not so good but I put out a completely different team. What I saw in those four games gives me reasons to believe South Africa can qualify for the Afcon.”
Bafana performed with degrees of competence in those matches. A 4-0 deconstruction of Sierra Leone was convincing, Zwane making a welcome and impressive return to international football, though the opposition looked a little undercooked too. A 1-0 win, also at FNB Stadium days later, was much poorer, though Broos rung changes. Bafana encountered stiffer resistance beating Mozambique 1-0 and drawing 1-1 against Angola in Mbombela a month later.
Another positive development Broos senses is that he is getting better co-operation from Premier Soccer League clubs and coaches. The 70-year-old Belgian, rightly, continues to harbour serious concerns over the standard of domestic football, which he first expressed a year ago to the ire of his employers at the SA Football Association, but borne out by Mamelodi Sundowns’ cakewalk of the Premiership in 2022-23.
The coach, though, is pleased much of the noise he encountered as he complained often about failed attempts to meet PSL coaches and teams, and of a lack of co-operation from clubs, has settled tremendously.
“I can install a lot more of organisation [around Bafana] that I wanted. I didn't find that in the beginning. The organisation was not good, there were no procedures. And now I see I have a response from clubs when the players are injured.
“Now, like with [Sundowns midfielder Sphelele] Mkhulise, I think three hours after I announced the 35 players [in the preliminary squad] I had the medical report to say the player was injured. This is certainly how it has to work.
“I think everything is a lot more calm now. There were a lot of critics and criticism, even from colleagues, and that hurts; colleagues were saying things that were not true.
“And then I got frustrated and said some things in June last year, because I had to say it. But OK, I think there is no battle any more now and I will try to qualify to be at Afcon next year.”
That calmness would quickly evaporate if Bafana fail in their mission against Liberia. And Broos needs to convey the message, and have it conveyed to him, that even once he’s successful in that undertaking much more is expected.
Bafana meet Liberia at Orlando Stadium on Friday (6pm) and in Monrovia next week Tuesday.
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