Broos unlikely to be afforded much patience

The real order of business starts with 2022 Fifa World Cup qualifiers in September

It’s not clear whether 69-year-old soccer coach Hugo Broos was coaxed out of a retirement village in Belgium by Safa to resurrect Bafana Bafana.

We are also not too sure what he did in the year before Covid-19 as he hasn’t had a gig since performing a caretaker role at tier one Belgian side KV Oostende between March 6 and April 29 of 2019.

We do know that he arrived in the country for his first media conference this week ready to impress his European brand of football on Bafana.

Around 11 months away from his 70th birthday, Broos was handed a fiveyear contract by Safa and his appointment raised eyebrows when one considers his level of maturity.

But perhaps he told his interviewers that age is but a number, before suggesting this week that any player over 30 would find it tough to make his Bafana team.

Broos wants a younger, motivated and attack-minded team. He also wants to build mental fortitude, something he believes has been missing from Bafana teams for some time.

We agree, but it will be interesting to see how he intends to go about instilling these qualities.

There is no doubt Broos arrives with an impressive CV‚ most notably having won league titles with Belgium club Brugge twice and once with Anderlecht. He also led Cameroon to the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations title.

But whether he has the mojo and the code to crack the enigma that is Bafana Bafana remains to be seen.

SA have qualified for only three of the last seven Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) and last qualified for a World Cup on merit 19 years ago.

They have not won Afcon since 1996 and many coaches, both local and international, have tried and failed.

Bafana play two friendlies against unconfirmed opponents in June and Broos’s assistant coach Čedomir Janevski and a yet-to-be-named SA assistant coach will oversee those two games until the Belgian arrives back in the country in July.

The real order of business starts with 2022 Fifa World Cup qualifiers in September.

Bafana are grouped with Ghana, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe and they will need to top the section in order to progress to the next stage of qualifying.

Broos was quick to cover his bases, saying that qualifying for Qatar was unrealistic.

He wasted no time pleading for patience and wants time to build a side that will qualify for 2023 Afcon and the 2026 World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the US.

He will find out quickly that longsuffering SA fans are not the patient types.