SAZI HADEBE | How far have Bafana progressed under Broos? Afcon 2023 will be a good pointer

The coming six to nine months will be the most interesting, busiest and critical for Bafana Bafana.

During these months we’ll be able to gauge whether the SA senior national football team is making any real progress under Belgian coach Hugo Broos since he took over in May 2021. 

The Bafana coach has made some commendable strides by qualifying for the delayed 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Ivory Coast early next year.

Yes, Bafana and Morocco had already qualified for 2023 Afcon when they met, but still Bafana were never expected to beat the 2022 Fifa World Cup semi-finalists even in a friendly.

Broos’s team did the unthinkable by beating Morocco, the highest-ranked team in Africa, 2-1 in their final qualifier in Johannesburg last month.

But Bafana may still finish second behind Morocco in their Afcon qualifying group if the North Africans win their last qualifier at home against Liberia in September.   

The road ahead will be a very steep and long one for Bafana and their coach. Part of that journey starts today when Broos learns who his side will face in the 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifiers.

It is a critical time for Broos because part of his bigger mandate is to ensure Bafana qualify for the next World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico where the participants will be bumped up from 32 to 48 teams. 

While Bafana have made some steady progress under Broos, it is their failure to be ranked among Africa’s top 10 teams that may hinder their chances of qualifying as one of the nine teams to represent the continent at the next World Cup.

Bafana last appeared in the global showpiece in 2010 when SA were the hosts. Being one of the five African teams in the previous World Cups has been a big ask for Bafana. Gordon Igesund (2014), Stuart Baxter (2018) and Broos (2022) have all failed to qualify Bafana for the World Cup.

Broos will get a rare second bite at the cherry and unlike in 2021 when he could use the excuse of having been at the helm for such a short time, there will be no such excuses this time around.   

While Broos may survive Safa’s chop even if his team underperforms in Ivory Coast, failure to qualify for the 2026 World Cup could be the last straw and the 71-year-old Belgian coach knows it. 

When the 2026 World Cup qualifiers draw is conducted in Ivory Coast (5pm SA time) on Thursday just after the 45th Caf Ordinary General Assembly, it will be Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali and Ivory Coast who’ll head nine teams in the qualifying groups.

Bafana will be in the second tier alongside Ghana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, DRC, Guinea, Zambia, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. If Bafana fail to qualify they may get a second chance to qualify via a play-off against teams from the other continents except Europe. But that will be determined by where they finish in the qualifiers.

While Bafana have made it to the 2023 Afcon — having played against Morocco twice — it must be remembered they were helped by the fact that the two top teams from each group qualified. There will be no such bonus in the World Cup qualifiers, where Bafana will have to top a group that has one of the nine best teams in Africa to make it into the 2026 World Cup. It’s a tall order, but as we’ve seen with Bafana’s brilliant performance against Morocco, there’s no team they can’t beat in Africa when they’re at their best.

So when we talk about whether Bafana is making real progress under Broos we can only make that call after seeing how they perform in the Afcon in Ivory Coast next year and in the qualifiers for the World Cup that will start in November and finish in October next year.

While Broos may survive Safa’s chop even if his team underperforms in Ivory Coast, failure to qualify for the 2026 World Cup could be the last straw and the 71-year-old Belgian coach knows it. 

Bafana are ranked so low at the moment because of how they’ve been performed since they last qualified for the World Cup in 2002. If Bafana had been regulars at the Afcon, finishing in the last four in the last three of four editions, they would definitely be among the top seeds in Africa. When you look at the teams in the top nine there’s no doubt that most have performed way better than Bafana in the last two decades. 

But as we saw with Bafana’s gutsy performance against Morocco in June, Broos’s team is growing in confidence. But what worries me is that the Bafana coach has shown little patience with players, chopping and changing his team in almost every game. 

In June last year Bafana lost 2-1 against Morocco in Rabat in what was their opening 2023 Afcon qualifier. The team that played against the same Moroccans a year later in Johannesburg only had Percy Tau and Ronwen Williams as survivors from the starting XI in Rabat.   

It is something that Broos has promised to curb as he looks to build a stable team towards Afcon 2023 and the 2026 World Cup qualifiers. 

In players like Zakhele Lepasa, Mihlali Mayambela, Mothobi Mvala, Teboho Mokoena, Thapelo Morena and Themba Zwane, most of which featured in the last game against Morocco, Broos has a chance to form a team that can see us achieve our goals. 

But first let’s see who Bafana faces in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers.