Take nothing away from Hugo Broos — frankly, South Africans now know, if there were doubters, he’s something of a magician.
The 71-year-old Belgian who is steeped in football knowledge — from being a defender in Belgium’s fourth-placed squad at Mexico 1986, his league titles coaching Club Brugge and Anderlecht to the role he played in the careers of Vincent Kompany and Anele Ngongca — is deservedly taking the plaudits.
He lost, or alienated, star players with Cameroon and did not care, winning the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations with a young team. To follow that up with a semifinal place with world 66th-ranked and African 12th-ranked Bafana Bafana, who are a mix of youth and experience and missed big stars Lyle Foster and Lebo Mothiba in Ivory Coast, has confirmed the 2017 title was no fluke.
Broos clearly does not care what people say — it shows in his bravery sticking to tough calls. Though, he can also be strangely thin-skinned sometimes, complaining of criticism — he has had less than many of his Bafana predecessors. Either way, he deserves all the pleasantries.
There are some others, not involved in the national team, who could get some recognition for conditions that allowed Broos to flourish.
It was not by coincidence he built his team on Mamelodi Sundowns. Broos’s left-back and Sundowns’ 28-year-old utility player Aubrey Modiba, who originated at Mpumalanga Black Aces and was groomed at SuperSport United, said more South African clubs need to try to compete in the Caf Champions League like the Brazilians.
Supporters of rival clubs who complained at how Broos’s team was built around Sundowns players — the back five, with keeper Ronwen Williams plus Khuliso Mudau, Grant Kekana, Mothobi Mvala and Modiba; Teboho Mokoena and Thapelo Morena in midfield and attacker Themba Zwane — miss the point. It needed to be, like when Spain won the 2010 World Cup with mostly players for the world’s best club then, Barcelona, plus a few from Real Madrid.
Patrice Motsepe floundered for some years with European coaches who did not bring results, but Pitso Mosimane built Sundowns into an unstoppable juggernaut, which was a project continued by Rulani Mokwena. Of course Bafana must be built around the club that dominates domestic football to the extent it has won six successive Premiership titles and toughened its players reaching the group and knockout stages of the Champions League annually.
Let’s not forget, Kaizer Chiefs have a stunning facility in Naturena but don’t spend on players; Orlando Pirates buy players but have no facility, to explain their lesser fortunes in recent years in a nutshell.
If Downs have created a world-class environment at Chloorkop where the cream of South Africa’s talent can flourish, the Pretoria neighbours they regularly plunder, SuperSport, has become the club with the best record of producing talent, especially since the decline of Ajax Cape Town/Cape Town Spurs. Williams, Mokoena and super-sub Thapelo Maseko are SuperSport products and the games of Modiba and Kekana were significantly refined in the professional, if far more modest, structure at Matsatsantsa. SuperSport coach Gavin Hunt — who, apart from his league titles and trophies of the past two decades, has consistently been a coach willing to promote and refine talent — is another deserved of an honourable mention.
With the lack of a genuine, centralised development plan from the South African Football Association (Safa), clubs that have got their academies functioning — and there are certainly not enough of them, though Stellenbosch FC, who produced talented Afcon squad youngster Jayden Adams are another worth a mention — are contributing to a better-groomed standard of young player emerging.
Many, after a lone successful campaign from Bafana in more than two decades — if an Afcon semifinal can be adjudged a success, then the gap has been 24 years — want to give some credit to Safa president Danny Jordaan.
In truth, the controversy and allegations of corruption that have followed the former 2010 World Cup bid CEO have overshadowed some good work. Again, far from enough. But — perhaps similarly to Cyril Ramaphosa and Jacob Zuma — theshort memories forget how poor the service delivery of president Molefi Oliphant and CEO Raymond Hack, with Premier Soccer League chair Irvin Khoza the reputed caller of the shots as vice-president, was in the build-up to the 2010 World Cup, where Bafana sagged to all-time lows.
On his return in 2013 Jordaan did progress coaching of coaches and though that never reached ambitious targets, it has made a difference from grassroots to senior level. He got the junior national teams active again, when they had lain neglected and dormant. But as various allegations swirled — from a rape charge to a Hawks investigation into alleged irregularities into the purchase of pleasure resort Fun Valley to turn into a national technical centre, which remains substandard by that lofty title — performance from Safa has been less than stellar. Sponsors have been lost, but some recovered again. The School of Excellence was never restored to what it once was, as promised. Even junior teams became neglected again as no permanent coaches were appointed and budgets and fixtures dried up.
Apart from their long pedigree, in the period where Bafana went into decline Nigeria, who beat Bafana on penalties in Wednesday's semifinal, have won a Nations Cup and finished third four times, and been to four World Cups. That does not mean the Nigerian Football Federation is a model of professionalism. Ditto another West African giant, Cameroon. Those countries are blessed with huge football-mad populations and conditions conducive for talent production lines. Imagine they had the resources, for one, but more importantly professional will, to institute programmes fractionally as impressive as Morocco’s, which has spurred club and women’s football and seen the Atlas Lions become the first African World Cup semifinalists in 2022.
Safa should not delude itself that Bafana beating Morocco in the Nations Cup qualifiers and shocking them again in the last 16 last week means South African men’s football has anywhere near the breadth and depth of talent in players. Bafana will not always have a Hugo Broos to work magic. Consistent results will come from Safa, and the PSL and all of its clubs, addressing the structural deficiencies in South African football.
But for now, it is to savour a first genuinely competitive Nations Cup campaign by Bafana in decades, a fighting, passionate performance that has brought desperately needed faith and buy-in again from a public that had mostly begun to give up on the once-beloved national team.
And it’s time to honour those — Broos, and those in pockets of excellence in men’s South African football like Mosimane, Mokwena, Motsepe, Hunt, Sundowns and SuperSport — whose contributions laid the framework for Bafana's heroic run in Ivory Coast.
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